Rothstein Associates Inc. Business Survival ™ Weblog

Growing reliance on Information Technology, along with compliance and regulatory requirements has led many organizations to focus on Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (DR) solutions.  Availability has become a major concern for business survival. This document by Shankar Subramaniyan CISSP, ABCP lays down some of the best practices and learning for implementing disaster recovery solutions.

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Virtually every business organization understands that successful operations depend on the continuous availability of its applications. Most companies rely on internal applications to keep the wheels of their enterprise turning

They also depend on external-facing applications. The failure of any of these business-critical applications could be catastrophic to a company.

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The Business Continuity Institute (BCI) has produced two Business Continuity training DVDs:

Practice Makes Perfect: exercising made easy – a comprehensive guide to exercising Business Continuity plans

and

Understanding Your Business: How to do a Business Impact Analysis.

Both videos and accompanying CDs have been structured around the BCI Good Practice Guidelines and the BS25999 standard.

Only $60.00 each!

TO PURCHASE: Just click through the heading of this email and use the “Add to Cart” buttons to access our secure checkout.

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Understanding Your Business: How to do a Business Impact Analysis – Training DVD

This 20 minute original film, complemented by a data CD, takes the viewer through the essential elements of a BIA: what it is; how to get management “buy in” and how to conduct a BIA.

The training film – based in a hotel – takes the viewer on an information gathering journey through the eyes of Ed, the lead character. We see Ed conducting his BIA in this familiar setting, providing the viewer with a clear and usable analogy.

The CD that accompanies the film contains a comprehensive questionnaire with a set of templates and guidance notes together with expert industry advice.

CD Contents:

• A word booklet containing a step by step guide to undertaking a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) including:
  • Understanding your business as part of the BCM lifecycle
  • What is a BIA?
  • The purpose of a BIA
  • The motivation for BCM and the sponsor
  • Establishing the scope
  • Methods and Techniques for Collecting Data
  • Determining how results will be used
  • Gathering and verifying your results
  • Identifying Respondents
• BIA questionnaire template with notes
• Sign and Review template
• FAQs
• Risk Assessments and the BIA with template

TO PURCHASE: Just click through the heading of this email and use the “Add to Cart” buttons to access our secure checkout.

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Practice Makes Perfect: exercising made easy – a comprehensive guide to exercising Business Continuity plans – Training DVD

Using a theatrical analogy, this clear, concise, and visually interesting 20 minute film demonstrates how performance (BC plan) is rehearsed – from simple desk top exercising through to more complex scenarios. The film is engaging and achieves a robust mix of practical training and engaging drama viewed through the eyes of a BCM Practitioner.

The accompanying CD contains a 2,700 word booklet detailing a step-by-step guide to exercising with templates; a guide to creating exercise scenarios; role-play scripts and debrief notes.

CD Contents:

• Annex A Main Event List
• BCI Booklet
• Creating Your Own Scenario
• Debrief Template
• Exercise Invitation Template
• Exercise Manager’s Notes
• Fire Scenario
• Glossary
• Injects Template for Role‐Players
• Scripts Flood
• BSI Folder
• BS 25999 Product Sheet
• BS 25999 A4 Advertisement for BSIDVD
• BS 25999 Global Product Guide
• BS 25999 Part 2 and Certification for BCI Continuity Magazine
• BSI Management Systems profile for BCIDVD
• About BCI
• About Ear Productions BC

TO PURCHASE: Just click through the heading of this email and use the “Add to Cart” buttons to access our secure checkout.

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SPECIAL OFFER! “Practice Makes Perfect” DVD, PLUS the groundbreaking book, Disaster Recovery Testing: Exercising Your Contingency Plan. Only $99.00 for the DVD PLUS book – save $10.00 if purchased together!

TO PURCHASE: Just click through the heading of this email and use the “Add to Cart” buttons to access our secure checkout.

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The smartest way to think about disaster is in terms of when, not if. The object of the game is to mitigate risk as much as is feasible, hope for the best, and prepare for the worst.

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Virtualization is transforming the data center. But did you know that virtualization can increase the risk of application downtime? Find out what it takes to get the same level of high availability and disaster recovery protection in the virtual server environment as in the physical environment.

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For retail IT directors, the end of American Eagle Outfitters’ 8-day E-Commerce collapse just marks the start of a new fear: that they’ll have to begin dispatching staffers to do sneak inspections of outsourcers. Will they need to burn precious staff time in unannounced audits, looking over the shoulders of service providers to make sure those techs are doing their jobs?

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When preparing a Disaster Recovery Center, one of the most important decisions is the location of the Disaster Recovery Center.

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The promise of cost savings derived from cloud computing is attractive, but concrete financial returns are not always quickly achieved. Except, perhaps, when it comes to disaster recovery.

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In the online-all-the-time world, business literally runs on data. Data – or more specifically information culled from volumes of stored files – is the resource that drives business innovation, expansion, and profits. Absent this information, business can and sometimes does come to an abrupt halt.

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Corporate computing has moved beyond mainframe systems and back office processing; it is only natural that disaster recovery (DR) technologies follow the same path. This is easier said than done, however, as network-based business applications, services, and files often demand low latency connectivity, large amounts of bandwidth, and unforgiving service level agreements (SLAs).

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The Singapore Computer Society (SCS) has launched its new ‘Certification in IT Business Continuity Management’ (CITBCM).

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