Business Continuity

The Inevitability of Disruption Makes Business Continuity Planning Critical 

Disruption to operations from increasingly common natural, intentional, and unintentional incidents elevates operational resilience to a board-level issue because of the potential financial, legal/regulatory, brand and reputational impact. Developing and documenting a predictable recovery capacity helps organizations:

• Meet governance, risk and compliance goals
• Address audit comments or respond to losses or insurance claims
• Align with global standards
• Meet partner requirements, loan covenants, insurance requirements and service level agreements
• Address risk issues in the supply chain
• On a global basis, our professionals provide practical, best-in-class business continuity planning (BCP) and continuity of operations planning (COOP) solutions to private sector and government clients, respectively, in virtually every industry sector

IT Disaster Recovery

Effective BCP and COOP programs depend on effective IT Disaster Recovery (ITDR) planning to provide the “supply” of technical resources and infrastructure required by the organization in its business continuity plan. The ITDR plan supports prioritized functional recovery of essential functions after operational disruption, degradation or downtime.

In operationally extended organizations where more people will permanently work from home, it falls to the information technology (IT) department to provide continuous, sophisticated technical infrastructure to securely support operations. The ITDR plan should integrate IT resources, call lists, “run books” and disaster recovery strategy options.

Testing and Exercises

Plans should be tested with facilitated, structured walk-throughs and failover tabletop exercises to help IT managers and business owners identify what events could occur and how they should respond, by practicing with simulations of business interruption scenarios, from routine to extraordinary. Well-rehearsed plans can mitigate impact and damage, while un-practiced plans can slow recovery.