Small and medium businesses often rely on being nimble enough in the market to compete with big businesses. A “disaster recovery plan template for SMBs” would ideally take that into account, covering all the different aspects of such businesses, while remaining concise enough to facilitate updates as business configurations change with market conditions. The trouble is that templates as generally applicable are unlikely to both effective and efficient at the same time. Perhaps the following “3P principle” could help put you put your own more manageable template in place.
Posts Tagged ‘disaster recovery plan’
SMB Disaster Recovery Plan Templates and the 3P Principle
Wednesday, January 25th, 2012Disaster Recovery Plan – the Map is Not the Territory
Friday, January 20th, 2012Although it’s encouraging to hear about perfect disaster recovery plans and outstanding recoveries, it’s also refreshing from time to time to hear about frank accounts of recoveries that weren’t so perfect. This isn’t for gloating. It’s for tempering optimism with reality and remembering that “the map is not the territory”. In other words, what you think might happen and what really happens are not necessarily the same things. Here’s what flummoxed ASCDI (Association of Service and Computer Dealers International), a worldwide association based in Florida.
Morphing DR Plans Into BC plans
Tuesday, December 20th, 2011Disaster recovery plans are like car insurance. It’s not because you’ve insured your car that you’re obliged to have an accident; similarly, it’s not because you have a great disaster recovery plan, that you’re obliged to have a disaster. Although reactive disaster recovery will always be a counterpart to proactive business continuity, better driving will also mean fewer accidents, so to speak. The more you can do in business continuity and the less you have to do in disaster recovery, the better.
The Danger Of Disaster Recovery Overkill
Monday, December 12th, 2011In theory, disaster recovery like its counterpart business continuity needs to concentrate on what is critical in an organisation to keep it functioning correctly, and concentrate on planning for and managing those aspects. Experience plays a large part in understanding how far to go, and having broad knowledge gained by working in or with the various operations of a company can be invaluable. Otherwise plans can become too elaborate and too costly compared to the general level of business risk that applies to an organisation. Yet, how much disaster recovery is too much?
Validating your data backup plan
Wednesday, September 21st, 2011Having a plan for data backup as part of your disaster recovery strategy is the right thing to do, but it’s not the end of the story. Too many organisations have planned their data backups, only to find in situations of emergency that the backups were unavailable or insufficient. The reasons can be varied, but the risk remains: data that are not stored safely, correctly or completely may be no better than data that are not stored at all. (more…)
Is your Disaster Recovery plan up to scratch?
Wednesday, April 27th, 2011In this searchcio.com article, Anthony Caruana highlights a recent IDC study which found that only one third (1/3) of the orgianisations surveyed could recovery more than half of their systems in real time. Worse still, only one in nine (9) believed they could restore any systems in realtime.
Anthony then provides eight tips for designing an effective disaster recovery plan.
Have you outgrown your paper-based business continuity and disaster recovery plans?
Monday, February 22nd, 2010Your organisation has changed and you are finding that the current “paper-based” planning methodology no longer is fit for purpose.
If you recognise any of the following items familiar, it may be time to invest in a business continuity software planning solution:
1. Are your plans hard to maintain and have numerous areas for updates?
2. Would the volume of updates and changes be better suited to the functionality of a relational database?
3. Does your organisation have numerous Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery stakeholders that are required to provide input and updates to the plans?
4. Is the import of your Business Impact Analysis (BIA) information a manual process taking significant time and effort to complete?
5. Is it difficult to provide granular reporting to Senior Management and auditors?
6. Is additional plan security required?
7. Are some sections of the plans “off limits” to certain groups or business units?
8. Is Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery exercising and training difficult to organise and complete?
9. Does your current plan require greater geographical coverage for your branch offices?
10. Are updates completed in a scheduled manner (or 1 week prior to an audit or test)?
If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, odds are that a more sophisticated Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery planning tool may be of use to the maintenance and health of your management program.
The best part is that this is not a “throw the baby out with the bathwater” scenario. Some of the better planning tools allow for the import of completed planning data directly into the software tool, retaining all of your previously completed hard work .
Time spent evaluating a Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery software planning tool may benefit your constantly changing and evolving plans and be of great value to your organisation.
Top 5 things to look for in a Business Continuity Consulting provider
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010The linked article here by Richard Jones of Burton Group in the US whilst written in 2008 is worth revisiting because it describes some useful tips on how to get the right staff for Business Continuity Planning. The article describes what you need in an internal BCP leader and how to find the right BCP consulting firm.
To summarise, the top 5 tips for finding the right Business Continuity Planning Consultants are:
- They should be able to produce a reference list of nearly all of their clients.
- They should clearly state their billing structure so there are no nasty surprises or sub-standard deliverables.
- They should be able to service all of your business locations.
- They should have experience in your type of business or at least a wide variety of industries rather than just specialising in just one vertical market.
- They should provide training, mentoring and tools to empower the organisation to continue the process internally.
So how do we stack up? OpsCentre is confident that we can tick all of those boxes.
Point 5 is something we feel really passionate about. At OpsCentre we don’t want to leave you with a set of documentation that gathers dust on the shelf. We want to help embed business continuity into the organisational culture so that there is a continual improvement cycle and evolution towards maturity of business continuity within that organization.
Read the full article here.
OpsCentre offers Recession Buster ‘Quick Start’ Business Continuity Planning
Thursday, December 31st, 2009This program is ideal for the small to medium enterprise. It is a fixed fee, fixed scope project that provides a complete solution in the fastest possible timeframe. It can usually be completed within a 1-2 week period.
We utilize our consulting experience and best-practice materials to adapt a business continuity strategy to suit your business.
We can offer these services for business continuity and also IT disaster recovery or pandemic planning.
More details in the service overview download section of our website. PDF’s available to download under Quick Start.
What is the difference between disaster recovery and business continuity planning?
Tuesday, December 29th, 2009Persons new to recovery planning often find it difficult to differentiate between Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery. In its simplest form, Business Continuity differs from Disaster Recovery in that its focus is on people and the continuation of business processes and objectives rather than the availability of IT systems and infrastructure.
Business Continuity Planning deals with taking pro-active measures to ensure continuity of business as well as plans to manage the response and recovery from a business interruption. The Business Continuity Plan would include a plan for the Command Team who will co-ordinate and oversee the response as well as sub-plans for the business units.
The IT Disaster Recovery Plan supports the recovery effort by detailing the IT system recovery priorities and time constraints, plans and strategies for recovery as well as detailed restoration procedures. The priorities and time constraints need to be driven from the business continuity requirements identified in the business impact analysis.
Of vital importance is getting Business Continuity Plans and IT Disaster Recovery Plans to dovetail in and work together to support one another in a recovery effort.
Need help integrating the pieces of the puzzle? Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Consulting