As you prepare to develop a business continuity plan, the first step is to align and prioritize the goals of the plan with critical elements of your organization.
Think about what it would take to conduct normal business when your normal facilities and resources are unavailable, then center your continuity goals on supporting the most essential components.
Assess the following checklist for your organization to prepare your business continuity strategy. Focus on building the solution around specific requirements so it is tight and actionable if it has to be implemented.
Create a development team: Assemble a team of key people that can offer input from the various areas of your organization as you begin developing your business continuity plan. This may include management, human resources, IT, security personal, internal communications staff, critical outside vendors, and your webmaster. Get input from everyone required to make your operations run smoothly as you develop the scope of your plan.
Identify essential personal: Align key management and employees with access to key systems. Prioritize the most important people and functions and build your plan around them. Be certain essential operations will be available even with the greatest levels of disruption.
Prepare remote access: In the event you need to implement your plan, it is likely key personal will be required to work remotely. Prepare for bandwidth spikes and increased security requirements for remote access. Determine the scalability of VPN connections and web-based software licenses so user availability can be increased as needed. Implement an SSL VPN so that key staff will have secure, flexible access to the company network via their web browser.
Prepare your Intranet: Your intranet may become the central point of access for employees during a business interruption. Insure that it is fast and reliable for remote access. This site should be backed-up along with off-site data as an automatic failover in the event the primary site is unavailable.
Enable mobile devices: With use of smartphones and other mobile devices now commonplace, your IT department can configure these to access network data in the event of an emergency. However, complete a thorough review of security polices--particularly if staff use personal devices-- to protect critical data.
Review mobile collaboration procedures: As part of your business continuity plan, you will want to implement and train staff in the use of Internet-based collaboration software and audio/video conferencing tools. This may become the primary means of communicating with each other and clients during the interruption period. These tools may be a convenience during normal business operations, but during an emergency they become critical.
Test and Modify: Any plan can have glitches when it is actually put into use. Once you get your business continuity plan laid out, test and re-test until you are confident that it works. Do periodic reviews to keep policies and staff updated so plans remain actionable.
These are the preparation fundamentals, and as you go through this process you will find they break into numerous subcategories. To help organize your business continuity plan, consider using a software solution that structures the planning and implementation process.
Is your business ready in the event of a disaster? Try the free survivalabilty index to gauge your current level of preparation.