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Why Is BCDR Important?
BCDR exists to reduce disruptions and outages in business operations.
Following best practices, BCDR practices will enable organizations to recover from problems quickly, reduce data loss risk and reputational harm and enhance operations while decreasing emergencies. BCDR may be an asset to some businesses. While most IT departments already have disaster recovery (DR) functions for individual systems, BCDR encompasses more than just IT: employee safety, crisis management and alternative locations are also vital considerations when discussing BCDR solutions.
Planning and preparation are central components of an effective BCDR strategy. BCDR professionals can assist their organizations in crafting such plans to maximize Resilience.
This process typically includes conducting a Business Impact Analysis (BIA), risk analysis, BCDR plans, exercises and training. Planning documents that form the backbone of an effective BCDR plan also aid resource management by providing information such as employee and emergency contact lists and vendor lists, test instructions, equipment lists and technical diagrams for systems and networks.
The results of a business impact analysis (BIA) identify areas for process enhancements and ways to utilize technology better.
Utilizing this plan provides alternative documentation and serves as a central repository of key contact details. The plan is an invaluable source for product design and planning, service design and provision, and many other activities.
The BCDR process must be used as a means for continuous improvement within an organization.
What Are Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Procedures?
BCDR and DR procedures are essential for any organization to continue operations after an event of any magnitude.
BCDR seeks to minimize risks by quickly returning an organization to a normal state after disruption; its goal is reducing emergency incidents while protecting data loss prevention, thereby helping retain or even enhance an enterprise's reputation. Technology and business executives increasingly recognize the need to collaborate on creating plans to respond to incidents together rather than working individually on these plans.
What Are The Critical Differences Between Disaster Recovery And Business Continuity (Bc)?
BC refers to proactive practices implemented by an organization to ensure mission-critical operations can continue regardless of disasters; this requires more comprehensive approaches that prioritize the long-term survival of an entity.
Disaster recovery (DR) is more reactive. It includes steps that organizations must take to resume operations following an incident. Response times range anywhere from seconds to weeks, depending on the severity of an incident.
BC addresses an organization, while DR deals with technology infrastructure. Disaster recovery forms part of business continuity by quickly accessing data after an emergency.
At the same time, BC considers risk management and other considerations needed by an organization to remain viable during an emergency.
Business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) share many similarities. Both take into account unplanned events like human error, cyber-attacks and natural disasters, which disrupt operations; both aim to quickly return business operations online as quickly as possible - especially mission-critical systems where time-to-market is critical.
A similar team may work on both plans.
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What Are The Differences Between Organizational And Operational Resilience?
Organizational and operational Resilience was initially created from business continuity concepts. Organizational Resilience (OR) is defined as the ability to protect an organization against disruptive events.
An organization comprises all employees within each department or unit; all infrastructure, applications and technologies utilized across its enterprise; buildings, workspaces and facilities; and all processes and policies essential to running one.
OR can only be achieved when all elements of an organization are safeguarded against adverse events and can adapt and change quickly in response to disruption to keep running their businesses.
At the same time, the issue is being addressed and normal operations resume.
Operational Resilience is one subset of organizational Resilience; OpR focuses on how a business responds to and adapts to pattern changes.
This description applies broadly, not just to BCDR issues and situations. OpR is a holistic approach to Resilience that addresses all issues related to daily business operations. OR and OpR management requires extensive preparation to predict potential disruptions that can disrupt an organization.
Unexpected disruptions can overwhelm its Resilience and negatively impact business performance.
Risk Analysis, Business Impact Analysis (BIA), and BCDR Strategies: What's the Deal?
Organizations looking to formulate an effective BCDR plan often find risk analysis and BIA invaluable tools in creating their plans.
The BCDR process centers on identifying internal and external risks. Risk analysis determines potential threats and their probability. A Business Impact Analysis (BIA) uses financial and non-financial analyses to quantify disruption costs; additionally, it identifies mission-critical functions an organization must maintain or restore following an incident and any resources required to support those functions.
An internal business impact assessment (BIA) is a complex process. It requires support from your management team to be completed effectively.
A BIA offers organizations an invaluable opportunity to gain insight into themselves and identify areas for improvement. Businesses use data gleaned from business impact analyses (BIAs) and risk analyses to devise disaster recovery and business continuity strategies, with each strategy becoming an action plan to ensure operational recovery - such as data replication, moving over to cloud services, activating alternative network routes or working remotely.
Read Also: Developing Robust Disaster Recovery Plan
When and Why Should BCDR Be Used?
A BCDR strategy could be created to protect employees' lives, ensure customer service availability, and safeguard revenue streams.
Other motivations often stem from factors like competitive positioning or reputational control - an organization perceived as incapable of providing services or protecting its workers may struggle attracting workers and customers. BCDRs can be significantly influenced by the regulatory and compliance environment.
businesses must establish written Business Continuity Plans to safeguard against emergencies or disruptions. FINRA oversees broker-dealers and thus has authority over their plans.
Business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) plans can be arduous. Their purpose can also vary. Organizations must consider several factors before declaring a catastrophe and activating their BCDR plan, including the expected duration of outages, impacts on operations and cost involved with activating it.
How to Develop a BCDR Plan
Organizations may create a BCDR plan by breaking it into both components (BC and DR). Disaster Recovery Plans (DRPs), on the other hand, consist of a summary and contact details for critical actions; a definition of responsibilities and guidelines to be applied when using it; policy goals related to disaster recovery planning; steps involved with incident response and recovery operations; authentication tools used; geographic risks identified for this plan history and a plan history document.
DRPs should consider staffing to ensure personnel capable of carrying out critical recovery tasks are always readily available when needed.
Business continuity and disaster recovery plans must communicate all levels of risk to an organization, with actionable steps for Resilience and recovery; protecting employees, facilities and the brand, including an effective communication plan; and listing actions undertaken and in what detail.
First and foremost, create a BCDR Policy. A policy typically covers the scope and responsibility for business continuity management and any activities.
Policy statements usually include measures related to performance and risk indicators that are easy to overlook but which remain essential in any business continuity audit.
BCP and DRP plans are typically developed by gathering BCDR members, conducting a BIA and risk analysis, and prioritizing critical aspects for quick recovery post-incident.
Once complete, testing, reviewing and updating procedures should occur regularly to stay practical and up-to-date with current best practices.
Plans should include everyone involved, even if only a few members participate directly. Plans should include third-party services and relevant data sources for inclusion into BCDR plans; any relationship between banks and third-party firms (potential data sources) should also be documented as it could serve as an information source.
External entities should also be informed to know how the plan will operate.
A BCDR checklist also includes risk mitigation plans and emergency communication strategies to inform employees in case of an emergency.
The following activities typically contribute to the creation of a BCDR Plan:
- risk identification
- Infrastructure Review
- BIA
- plan design
- plan implementation
- Testing
BCDR Testing
Testing your Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan assures that its recovery procedures will function as expected to maintain business operations.
Furthermore, tests may reveal areas for improvement that must be addressed immediately so they can be included in future versions of your plan.
Simple or complex tests can be employed. Participants walk through plan steps in a tabletop exercise that simulates discussions about them, giving employees in BCDR roles familiarity with its response process while administrators can evaluate its efficacy.
Full-scale simulations require participants to carry out BCDR functions actively rather than discussing them during tabletop tests.
They may involve backup systems and recovery locations as part of drills. Testing still takes time, money, management support, employee involvement and pre-test preparation before administering test participants' training and reporting.
Testing frequency depends on your organization. Tom Thomann of Insight Enterprises noted that larger companies should conduct periodic BCDR exams while smaller businesses may test less frequently; complete BCDR analyses require more resources and should be carried out annually.
As part of a separate business continuity test, Ton found it more effective to conduct separate DR and business continuity tests rather than one combined one, as this allows separate tests to take place on their own time with less disruption to an organization's daily work processes.
Plan maintenance, periodic testing and Resilience are inextricably linked. An organization strengthens Resilience by regularly updating and exploratory testing its BC/DR Plans.
BCDR Cost Management
An evolving threat environment or new business ventures may necessitate increasing disaster recovery coverage within an organization, necessitating increased BCDR spending on consulting or backup and disaster-recovery technologies.
Suppose the budget does not provide sufficient funds to finance BCDR plans and technologies. In that case, BCDR managers must find alternative funding sources.
Investment proposals that outline new BCDR capabilities' advantages to an organization must include a business case.
Before making funding requests, it should also be assessed whether these new capabilities have any impacts in other areas like cybersecurity. By having business leaders estimate the costs associated with various events, organizations can establish a baseline to guide their BCDR investments.
Standard Templates, Software and Services for BCDR Planning. Various resources are available to organizations looking to establish a business continuity planning and disaster recovery process, including tools, templates, software applications and advisory services.
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan Templates
Templates offer organizations a quick way to develop business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) plans that cover all or certain aspects of a disaster recovery strategy.
An SLA may be essential in creating an effective BCDR plan, as it sets standards for an organization's BCDR program and helps ensure services provided by third-party DR hot-sites are of acceptable quality. As discussed above, business impact analysis (BIA) templates can assist with continuity planning by documenting parent processes, subprocesses, financial impacts of disruptions, and their financial ramifications.
Business continuity plans can be scheduled with BCDR to keep and update them. From scheduling a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) to reviewing disaster recovery plans, tasks related to business continuity planning may vary significantly.
Outsourcing BCDR Planning Services
Outsourcing business continuity disaster response (BCDR) can be outsourced to a third-party firm for added efficiency and cost reduction.
They will offer risk analysis, plan creation and maintenance, training programs, etc. To select an ideal BCDR vendor, it's crucial that businesses carefully examine their requirements, such as what services are expected from vendors as well as any expenditure and potential information needs that vendors must fulfill.
Accounting firms can provide planning assistance by performing Business Impact Analyses with business continuity planning processes.
Former CIO Brien Posey, the technology writer, states that accounting firms can help estimate workload outage costs more accurately; buyers should opt for a user experience with business continuity and IT resource planning; Posey suggests consulting firms offer additional assistance with BCDR plans. Managed service providers (MSPs) often serve their SMB clientele as virtual Chief Information Officers (CIOs). MSPs can help plan for this role.
As MSPs specialize in overseeing client assets, they can quickly devise a plan to deal with unexpected outages.
Supporting Technologies, Strategies And Technologies
Cloud computing has vastly increased the technology options available to companies when executing a BCDR Plan's disaster recovery component in recent years.
Organizations typically use an offsite facility or replicate production systems at these DR sites, making DR less accessible for many SMBs and smaller organizations. Now services like Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) are becoming readily available on hybrid cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services or Azure for disaster recovery.
Cybersecurity, incident response, and emergency notification systems are products commonly used for business continuity management.
Vendors that restore work environments may offer their employees new workspaces as part of this service.
BCDR Management
To effectively create, execute and monitor a BCDR Plan during an emergency scenario, it should involve multiple stakeholders from across an organization and draw upon existing expertise.
The leadership of a BCDR team may vary by organization.Large companies are often led by their risk manager, with an IT representative serving as vice-chair.
He noted that smaller organizations without dedicated risk departments might appoint their CFO as a leader. At the same time, in some instances, even IT managers themselves may lead their BCDR teams.
The team will include:
- Representatives from critical areas within an organization, including finance and accounting.
- Facilities management.
- Legal representation (both internal counsel and outside legal help ).
- Marketing and public relations functions.
Stakeholder engagement can be challenging when creating a BCDR Plan and conducting risk and impact analyses, thus stressing the importance of project management; Ton suggested organizations consider hiring project managers to oversee this process.
BCDR should be responsible for updating plans and assuring business continuity, with regular plan updates due to constantly shifting business initiatives and data center technologies.
an organization's first step should be identifying whether their existing plan can simply be updated or a new one must be created; organizations should then conduct testing to assess if a significant overhaul is necessary.
A BCDR team may conduct a business continuity audit to assess its efficacy plan. An audit should identify any threats to its success and assess the controls against those threats to ensure that these are acceptable to the organization.
In addition, IT General Controls Audit can help pinpoint risks and areas for improvement within infrastructure systems.
An effective BC plan audit includes five essential elements.
- Business continuity policies provide details on the roles and responsibilities that members of BCDR teams enact from planning through to testing; in some instances, it could also include external personnel like customers and vendors.
- Building a BCDR team involves educating individuals on best practices for BCDR management. Furthermore, BCDR team members may use business continuity certification programs and training courses.
- The Business Continuity Institute, an esteemed international organization, offers the Certificate of the Business Continuity Institute as an industry standard certification on methods and procedures related to business continuity management. For those wanting further expertise, additional knowledge can be acquired with an optional Diploma course offered by this institute.
- BCM Institute offers the Business Continuity Certified Planner accreditation (BCCP). This certification serves to demonstrate professional expertise in business continuity management.
- At these conferences, BCDR team members can also receive additional education. For those interested in business continuity, Tonne recommended the Disaster Recovery Institute and Disaster Recovery Journal as excellent resources.
Read Also: Implement A Regular System Backup And Disaster Recovery Plan
BCDR Traps: Be Aware of Gaps
Change is one of the chief enemies of BCDR's plans. Technological advancement is rapidly increasing, and organizations must regularly update their IT equipment - from servers and storage, networks and devices, cloud computing services and devices - as technological change accelerates.
Therefore, plans created five years ago likely won't provide sufficient protection for today's IT estate.
Change management processes within an organization may provide the answer. Change management includes adapting systems, infrastructure and documents as necessary; similar to the testing and planning processes of BCDR testing/planning processes, change management could include business continuity/disaster recovery in its efforts.
Organizations constantly shift over time. For example, organizations may acquire, divest or launch new business lines; therefore, an effective BCDR plan must be updated regularly to reflect these development teams and regularly tested for gaps that might have been missed by neglecting to take account of technology or business changes.
Organizations using cloud-based software should familiarize themselves with their vendors' data protection and recovery service level agreements (SLAs) and ensure their BCDR plans include SaaS applications with their availability requirements.
Bertrand notes that awareness of SaaS vendor SLAs has increased, though not to all its constituents. He claims that the data security and recovery policies of SaaS companies were known to 58% of ESG respondents.
A BCDR Checklist -- or series of checks -- can help organizations identify any potential issues and weaknesses within their BCDR plans.
Teams responsible for BCDR must also remain aware of evolving threats to keep their plans relevant; organizations should monitor business continuity risks like active shooter incidents and cyber attacks to keep plans current.
Business Continuity Software Has Many Benefits
Business continuity software offers many advantages to an organization's operations and success.
Consolidated Access
Business continuity software makes it simple and accessible to create a personalized emergency plan and store all documents and plans under one roof.
Manage your plans efficiently in one location and quickly access information when time is of the essence.
Incident Management
Most business continuity tools feature incident management capabilities that enable organizations to restore vital business operations while mitigating financial losses.
Emergency Alerts
Communication is paramount during times of crisis. Emailing every employee individually would take too much time and be unreliable.
Business continuity software makes communicating fundamental changes easier for employees. Such solutions typically feature features such as emergency notification systems, templated messages and text alerts to keep employees up-to-date.
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Conclusion
Since the pandemic, business continuity planning has taken on new meaning for companies. They now require robust continuity plans backed by data to survive major disruptions like COVID-19.
Software selection for business continuity should be undertaken on an individual basis. When choosing the ideal tool, selecting one with multiple functionalities and operational support is vital to optimize business processes and help keep them running smoothly.
