Author: Bea Ewing
Date: November 23, 2020
Kids Oneida Implements BC/DR Plan
Challenge
Integrated Community Alternatives Network, ICAN, formerly known as Kids Oneida needed to be able to effectively continue critical business processes in the event their company is faced with a business interruption. The primary focus for this project was to assist Kids Oneida with the development of both a technical and written Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery (BC/DR) Plan.
Solution
The development of a functional BC/ DR Plan for a business requires the active participation of the organization to provide a key point of contact as well as access to personnel with the knowledge of the company’s critical/core business functions and IT details. The creation of a BC/DR Plan was accomplished through four phases to include data gathering, risk reduction options, development and documentation, and training and testing.
Goals of this process include:
- Assess and identify key areas of risk including systems, facility and general business risk
- Understand critical/core functions and processes
- Identify system / critical function dependencies
- Define expectations for recovery of critical/core functions and data recovery
- Review and analyze current data storage/backup plans and capabilities
- Analyze available disaster recovery and risk reduction solutions that are appropriate
- Recommend solutions that improve disaster recovery and reduce risk
- Train personnel on how to make use of and maintain the DR Plan
- Validate and test the integrity of the documented IT DR Plan
A multitude of objectives and processes were necessary to achieve these goals including (but not limited to):
- On-site workshop including discussions and interviews to understand the risk and critical functions within the organization. The workshop documented the impact of a disruption to each of the critical functions. At the completion of the workshop the participants identified the critical functions and began to document the impact analysis for each.
- Review and analyze current data storage/backup plans and capabilities
- Analyze available disaster recovery and risk reduction solutions that are appropriate
- Train key personnel on how to implement the plan and acquaint them with its procedures, strategies and roles in the event of a disaster
Through completing these four phases, it was then possible to determine the deliverable for functionality needed to move forward.
Business Outcome
This BC/DR Plan will now ensure ICAN the capability to continue with critical business processes in the event their Information systems become unaccessible or fail. Additionally, it provides recovery and relocation strategies for resuming business functions at an alternate location. Ultimately this will allow ICAN to successfully absorb the impact of an event and prevent business failure.
