Disaster Recovery Journal

Since you’re a visitor to the DRJ blog and website, it is generally understood that you’re here to learn more about the business continuity plan (BCP) and disaster recovery plan (DRP). The easiest way to get the basics on these two critical aspects to the longevity of any company or organization is to read the DRJ Glossary.

The DRJ Glossary provides a solid grounding on the key terms associated with BCP and DRP. For the purposes of this blog post, it is useful to include the definitions of each here:

Having a business continuity plan is nice, but if you don’t know when and how to start using it, the money you’ve invested in it was spent in vain. Even worse, you’ll likely lose quite a lot of money because your business operations will be disrupted.

What is a business continuity plan?

In every company there are decision-makers and decision-influencers. Often it is the decision-influencers who see the need for the service/solution and who work to convince the decision-makers to agree and sign the contract.

So, how does this apply when making decisions about your disaster recovery and business continuity plans? What is the normal process for your organization when making decisions that will have a large impact on the longevity and success of your company?

 

As anyone who monitors news sources knows, British Petroleum (BP) has taken a beating in the media since the April 20^th explosion that led to eleven deaths and hundreds of millions of gallons of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico.  While the latest effort to cap the well appears effective, the perception associated with BP's reactive "by the seat of our pants" response effort failed to restore feelings of goodwill and faith, which will most likely lead to a continuation of boycotts, lawsuits and market-share loss. 

Like any niche business, this one of Disaster Recovery Planning and Business Continuity Planning has its own jargon and terminology. Often for people new to thinking about and considering how their company can be best protected in the event of a disaster, this jargon becomes overwhelming.

So to help clear the air and keep things simple, lets review some of the key terms of our industry – hopefully making it easier for you to discuss Disaster Recovery Planning and Business Continuity Planning with your colleagues.

Is the sky falling?  Or are we over sensitive?

June 23^rd 2010 is a date that for some will remain an important day, but for most of us, it was just another day. On this day, there was a 5.0 magnitude earthquake in the North East of North America.  If you live in an area that experiences these types of tremors on a regular basis, you’re probably giggling at the near hysterical response that did occur...  If you live in the North East, you experienced a one in 500 year phenomena!

I have been resisting the urge to write about the myriad of continuity related issues and mistakes coming out of the gulf oil spill. However, recent articles and interviews about BP's contingency plan for an event at Deepwater Horizon raise an interesting question.

 Taking a quick step back, it seems that on an almost daily basis there is yet another communication blunder or operational disconnect that overshadows any progress BP may be making.  The accumulation of false starts, failed attempts, and changes to communication strategies only reinforce the idea that, to a large extent, BP is making things up as they go along - both technically and from a PR perspective.  The interesting part is that they have a plan - spanning hundreds of pages (I'll tackle the issue of quantity vs quality another time) - that was supposedly designed to address this type of worst case scenario.

The question is, is it better to have an imperfect (and in this case a woefully imperfect) plan rather than none at all? And if so, how do you set the bar for "close enough"? This has implications from both an operational perspective - time, manpower, cost etc. - and, more importantly, from an ethical perspective - for BC professionals.

The Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a horrible natural disaster that the area might never recover from…  This much is known.  So many people have asked why we haven’t written anything on our blog about it and why we aren’t using it when it comes to business interruption scenarios.  The answer is simple, it is such a massive incident that most people can’t wrap their heads around it and would simply say “we aren’t a petroleum company, so it doesn’t apply”.  While that is true, I was reading an article today on the fact that BP share prices have dropped for the second day in a row.  Half way down this article, there is a perfect Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery piece that ties back to handling the media that has been written about here and here.  Read the following and see how it all ties together:

On the corporate front, BP shareholders would prefer to sacrifice the company’s Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg rather than CEO Hayward over the ongoing crisis, the Times of London reported in its Wednesday edition.

Do you want to tell your stakeholders that your backup plan is to shoot golf balls, shredded tires, knotted rope and other materials at the problem?  Since my initial post on May 11 regarding the Gulf Oil Spill , news sources from across the country have made it clear that a lack of backup planning have allowed this environmental catastrophe to grow out of control.  Today, as the leak continues to pour crude oil into the Gulf, the term "backup plan" is being thrown around between industry professionals, government leaders and community members affected by the spill.  The "blame game" will continue for years, but the need for proactive backup planning is clear today. 

The following excerpts detail some of the frustration regarding the recent lack of backup planning in the Gulf and shed light on the need for backup planning in your own organization:

When you think of disaster what do you think of? Chances are you put flood, massive power outage, fire, and pandemic at the top of your list. These are all events that really we can't control - the hurricanes are going to happen, the power does go out, fires happen sometimes due to human error, and health crisis are still one of the large mysteries of life. So for these events that may or may not happen, you understand the need to have a disaster recovery and business continuity plan. Since you're reading this blog post, I assume you have such a DR/BCP in place to keep your business working efficiently when "disaster" strikes.