Business continuity is a big deal these days, and disaster recovery plans are a key component of business continuity.
Below is a brief checklist to help guide you:
Business Continuity Plan (BCP) Project Approach
1. Business Impact Analysis
a. Review existing business continuity capabilities:
i. Evaluate the risk to business process failures
ii. Identify critical and necessary business functions/processes and their resource dependencies
iii. Estimate the financial and operational impacts of disruption and the required recovery timeframe for these critical business functions
iv. Assess the effectiveness of existing risk reduction measures
b. Compile BIA Report:
i. Financial impact of disruption
ii. Operational impact of disruption
iii. Prioritized critical functions for business continuity
iv. Recover time frames for critical functions
v. Required resources (i.e., computer systems, vital records, telecommunications and work areas) for business continuity
2. Strategy Selection
a. Identify a range of specific recovery strategies to address interruptions of production processes
b. Identify the computing resources required to recover the various distributed processing environments
c. Document alternative recovery strategies within a Recovery Strategy Selection report
3. Business Continuity Plan Documentation
a. Create new Business Continuity Plan including:
i. Emergency notification and disaster declaration procedures
ii. Recovery team procedures
iii. Facility and business restoration procedures
iv. BCP testing and maintenance cycles
v. Appendices for master contact lists, equipment inventories, connectivity schematics, etc.
Twelve Business Continuity Plan (BCP) Components:
- Personnel
- Technology Components
- Data Center Recovery Alternatives
- Backup Recovery Facilities
- Geographic Diversity
- Backup and Storage Strategies
- Data File Backup
- Software Backup
- Off-site Storage
- Facilities
- Communications
- Other Considerations
For more on IT disaster recovery, take a look at a recent blog on the subject.
Sarah Morris is a technical writer for KirkpatrickPrice, a provider of world-class audit services. Visit www.kirkpatrickprice.com.