One New Year’s Resolution to Keep: Have a Continuity Plan

Business continuity management — more commonly known as “disaster recovery”, even in the present day — used to be about worst-case scenarios.  That is:

“What is the worst thing that could befall my company, and how do I ensure minimal to no disruption of the company’s operations if that happens?”

Aftermath of 1906 San Francisco Quake

“What could happen” has traditionally centered on such events as:

• Natural disasters (fire, flood, storm, earthquake);
• Disasters of the human kind (terrorism, rioting, looting, etc.);
• Major utility outages; and
• IT system problems (malware attacks, hardware failures, etc.).

While the likelihood of such a catastrophic event is believed to be very small, its impact – if it occurred – would probably devastate the business, causing it to fail.

As computers have insinuated themselves into every facet of every type of business, and the importance of alignment of strategy and operations has been realized, the scope of “disaster recovery” has broadened.  More complex recovery systems have been devised to address companies’ needs on a more comprehensive basis.

However, we’re still focused primarily on disaster recovery — assuming that only the worst will happen – rather than using a truly comprehensive, risk-based approach to crisis and continuity management.  Instead of dwelling on the most unlikely of possibilities, we ought to be more concerned with:

• What threats are more likely to take shape than others?
• Which of those threats, if manifested, will have the greatest impact on the company, which will have the next-greatest impact, and so on?
• How will the company act to prevent those problems or minimize their effect?

I’m not suggesting that your company has to completely give up on the doomsday scenario.  However remote the possibility of a cataclysmic event, you want to be prepared.

I am saying that your business continuity management plan ought to cover the risks inherent in conducting day-to-day business as well as the remote possibilities…things like the current brittle economic environment, or risks to our business structure and processes (e.g., cloud computing, embezzlement, misuse of company information, swine flu).

What do you think?  Could your crisis and continuity management plan take a more comprehensive, risk-based approach? Are you satisfied with your current plan?  Do you even have a plan?

Or, are you counting on the world to end in 2012?  (In which case, I suppose, the whole crisis and continuity exercise is moot.)

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Originally published in 2009 by Bizmanualz, Inc. under the title One New Year’s Resolution to Keep: Have a Continuity Plan. All rights reserved. Reproduction permitted with attribution only. www.bizmanualz.com