Rothstein Associates Inc. Business Survival ™ Weblog

Congratulations - You’re Prepared!

You have complete, documented and tested business continuity and/or disaster recovery plans. You’re all set, right?

But wait – are you certain you’ve addressed all the issues? Doesn’t it make sense for another pair of eyes to take a second look - especially if your cost was minimal?

For a limited time and exclusively for Business Survival(tm) subscribers, Rothstein Associates has made special arrangements with Paul F. Kirvan, FBCI, CBCP, CISSP NCE, to audit a plan you select against industry standards BS 25999 or NFPA 1600.

All this - for the special price of only U.S./Canada $295.00 (€240 or £195)!

Paul will promptly send you a detailed report with the results and his recommendations based on his experience with hundreds of business continuity plans.

It’s not often that you can take advantage of one of the most experienced business continuity practitioners so inexpensively - don’t waste this opportunity! This is not a ‘canned’ report - Paul will deliver customized recommendations based on your actual plan documentation.

Paul Kirvan, FBCI, CBCP, CISSP, NCE offers over 20 years hands-on experience in all aspects of business continuity and disaster recovery. He is a board member of the Business Continuity Institute and has been a partner of Rothstein Associates for almost two decades.

Contact Paul Kirvan directly at pkirvan@msn.com for your BC audit!

Fort Morgan, Colorado school district officials are working hard to make sure its schools meet the requirements of the National Incident Management System.

The board approved changes to its crisis management policy, which reflect the work being done on the emergency response compliance plan, said Superintendent Greg Wagers.

Vicki Davis, chairwoman of the district’s security committee, said her committee and the district still had a few chores to do before the district was in full compliance with the National Incident Management System [NIMS] and the incident command system.

See Schools focus on emergency management by Dan Barker.

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The Comprehensive Crisis and Continuity (COOP) Template for Public & Private Schools (K-12) is a powerful yet easy-to-use tool - over 650 pages on CD.

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Despite the current tough times, companies that already have a business continuity management (BCM) program should not look for ways to cut expenses relating to their business continuity plans (BCP).

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There is a significant disconnect between information technology (IT) and business executives when it comes to disaster recovery preparedness, according to the results of a new State of Disaster Recovery survey. While both sets of executives share same views on the importance of information availability to the business, survey data reveal a split in how to achieve the goal of minimizing downtime when an unplanned IT outage occurs.

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Email has become the most pervasive form of business communication, impacting every aspect of every organization: communications between management, employees, prospects, customers, vendors, suppliers, partners, investors, and analysts.

MessageOne, a provider of email continuity solutions, commissioned a research report to understand the frequency, severity, and cause of email outages in North American corporations using Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes.

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Manufacturing is a business sector that is not as well understood as other business models from a business continuity perspective. This article by Douglas Henderson, FSA, CBCP, should help business continuity practitioners to understand issues that are especially critical to the manufacturing environment. Doug is the author of a new planning tool for business continuity for manufacturing and distribution environments (described at the end of this article).

The production of a product by a manufacturer can be illustrated by examining a ‘Supply-Demand Chain’ or ‘Process Flow.’  The product is first manufactured, then fabricated, then assembled, checked, packed and finally shipped.  The production of the final product is clearly dependent on all operational components continuously functioning.  Of course there are inventories of raw materials and partially completed product that need to be taken into consideration as well.

Service industries are also a type of (less visible) Supply-Demand Chain with many interdependencies.  Information/data of some type is collected, verified, analyzed (with some value added) and sold to a customer.  The entire process is sometimes completely void of paper or other physical object.  However, Supply-Demand Chain principles are most easily illustrated by examining a manufacturing business.

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The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) conducted an exercise to test the readiness and capabilities of federal departments and agencies—coordinating with the White House—to execute their Continuity of Operations (COOP) plans.

The exercise, known as Eagle Horizon, is a mandatory annual exercise for all executive branch departments and agencies coordinated by DHS through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and its National Continuity Programs (NCP) Directorate.

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It is widely recognised that the UK PSTN (Public Switched Telephony Network) infrastructure is one of the most reliable infrastructures in the world with examples of services being quoted as having ‘five 9s availability’: i.e.99.999% availability equating to some 5 minutes downtime across the whole network over a twelve month period.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the connectivity, the telephone circuits, installed by the various Tier I Providers between their respective Local Exchanges.

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Successfully resuming business operations after a significant business interruption or disaster requires a business continuity plan developed by an influential business executive, experts say. This contrasts with the reality at many organizations, where the IT executive who successfully developed the disaster recovery plan and/or the business continuity plan for IT is tapped for the broader initiative.

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Agility Recovery Solutions and Hughes Marketing Group have conducted a Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity Survey of over 700 small and mid-size business owners, executives, managers and directors in the United States and Canada.

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Further to an article,  Maximum Tolerable Period of Disruption (MTPOD) by Jacque Rupert, published recently by Continuity Central, Malcolm Cornish provides an update on the latest thinking on MTPOD and highlights a ‘corrigendum for BS 25999’, relating to Maximum Tolerable Period of Disruption, which was approved on June 9th 2009 by BSI’s BCM/1 standard development committee.

See Maximum Tolerable Period of Disruption (MTPOD): BSI Committee Response, By Malcolm Cornish, FBCI FCA, BSI BCM/1 committee member, as appears on Continuity Central.