Disaster Recovery Journal, Winter 2010

The approach is vertical, top down, one process/function at a time. This is where everything gets discussed and documented. What is required to activate and make operational the process/function, including resource requirements? After each one is finished take the next highest priority/critical process/function on the list and do it all over again until all processes/ functions are completed.

The business continuity planner must keep in mind that some processes/functions may have the same priority/critical rating assigned to them. Given that during a recovery effort, there may be a limited amount of resources available to be used, a sequence number must be assigned to each priority/critical processes/functions.

Use of the sequence number is a way to further define the priority/critical processes/functions to the next level and to assure the available resources are used by the processes/functions in the order of their ability to deliver the desired results.

Another thing the business continuity planner must keep in mind is the recovery point objective (RPO) required of each organization unit including IT, data communications, and voice communications. The organization as a whole cannot meet its recovery time objective (RTO) if the organizational units do not meet their RPO. Keeping this in mind the business continuity planner must add in the factor of the data recovery objective (DRO) which would be the lead time to recover any lost data that must be reconstructed. The DRO may be automated or hard copy. A great deal of the business continuity planner’s responsibilities center around these seven questions being answered, keeping them current, and making sure everyone knows what role he/she is to play during plan testing and if the plan ever would need to be implemented.

Business continuity planners have the responsibility to make sure that everyone understands that recovery planning is not just the business continuity planner’s responsibility, it is everyone’s responsibility.

The business continuity planner pro-
vides the methodology, is the coordina-
tor, leads the effort, sees that meetings are
scheduled, and facilitates those meetings.
He or she oversees the development of
the plan document and the leadership to
get the job accomplished. It is critical that
everyone takes the time and expends the
energy to make sure their part of the orga-
nization is properly prepared to meet any
unexpected crisis the organization may
experience.

We step up

when you go down

Severe weather. Man made incidents. Catastrophic events. Unplanned events can stop your time-critical print-to-mail operations centers, but not the expectations of your customers.

At Pitney Bowes, our secure ISO registered Business Recovery Services Center can provide a dedicated hot site environment that is fully tested and capable of responding to just about every crisis.

For less urgent events, we provide production mail capabilities in support of peak processing or one time events which can overload your own operations centers.