Contingent controls complement business continuity, disaster recovery
Will your business keep running if the lights go out? Implementing contingent controls is an important but sometimes overlooked aspect of ensuring business continuity and disaster recovery.
Whether you’re responsible for complying with such regulations as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act or HIPAA, or if you’re trying to help the company enforce good internal governance, your job extends beyond the technology: You must make sure the system’s business continuity technology is effective.
Key to getting business continuity correct is the way you profile risk. Like software architects, pure technologists are likely to be concerned primarily that a piece of important technology isn’t running. The astute compliance strategist, however, will focus on the bigger impact: the fact that the business isn’t running.
Thinking critically about real risk will get you started down the path to an effective foundation for business continuity. Remember, the goal is to keep the business running, not to keep the LEDs flashing on your servers. Start by asking such questions as, “What could prevent my company from processing orders?” From there, start to build contingent controls, which may employ technology in ways you wouldn’t have thought of before.
See Contingent controls complement business continuity, disaster recovery, by John Weathington for SearchCompliance.com.
Tags: contingent controls
