Business Continuity Plan Best Practices

The BCP should also spell out a plan for setting up operations at an alternative location if the building is destroyed or rendered unusable by a disaster.

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The DRT members will work with emergency services during the disaster and should have access to equipment they'll need during an emergency (cell phones, flash lights, hard hats, protective clothing, etc.).

A business recovery team is responsible for reestablishment of normal operations after the crisis is over.

For continuity of business, your organization should plan for what to do in case of a long-term outage (more than the hour or less that your uninterruptible power supplies will keep your computers and network equipment running).

If you have backup generators in place, ensure that key personnel know how to switch to generator power and know the fuel requirements for the generators (must they be fueled or do they run off the natural gas line? Consider cost factors to determine when and for how long the generators should be run.

This is no time to be scrambling for phone numbers.

Information should be included for both internal personnel (CEO, CIO, legal advisor, etc.) and external personnel and services (police, fire, ambulance, security services, utility companies, building maintenance, etc.).A cyberterrorism attack might bring down your network but not affect the functionality of the hardware or your personnel.A bombing may destroy both human life and network components.Your BCP should note which employees have cell phones and their numbers, as well as whether and where you have other methods of communicating during a widespread disaster, such as ham radios.If you run your own e-mail servers, do key employees have alternative e-mail addresses that they check regularly (home accounts or accounts with Web-based e-mail services, etc.) and are these addresses known to other key personnel in case they're needed for emergency contact?A key component in any crisis management situation — which is what you have during and perhaps immediately after the disaster — is assignment of areas of responsibility and establishment of a chain of command.This is no time to have department heads squabbling about who has decision-making authority.The BCP should address the step-by-step process of recovering and reinstating the business operations to a pre-disaster state, including assessing the damage, estimating recovery costs, working with insurance companies, monitoring the progress of the recovery process, and transitioning the management of the business operations from the recovery team back to the regular managers.Your access to the NCBI website at gov has been temporarily blocked due to a possible misuse/abuse situation involving your site.Providing full electrical power to a building with a generator can cost much more than using the power grid, so the BCP should discuss in what situations it's better to close down operations and send everyone home rather than run on generator power, and it should define who has the authority to make that decision.If your company's phones and/or Internet connection are down, how will you keep in touch with customers, employees who are off-site, contact emergency services, etc.?