Understanding the Basics of a Business Continuity Plan

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Understanding the Basics of a Business Continuity
Plan
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• On paper, a business continuity plan is something
  that you refer to during the period of
  displacement so as to keep your organization up
  and running. But in reality, theres more to it.
• For starters, it ensures that you are all set for
  remote journaling, a process thats often carried
  out to reduce the recovery time and involves the
  online transmission of data to a backup system at
  periodic intervals.
• It also allows you to benefit from cold and hot
  sites, disaster recovery services that come in
  handy when theres a failure.

Continued
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• Having said that, gone are the days when it was
  the IT Departments responsibility alone to
  implement any such plan.
• Today, managers and the rest of the employees
  must also participate. And with equal
  participation from everyone, it may be possible
  to implement the plan in case of
• Fire
• Power failure
• Corruption of database
• Human error
• Social unrest

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A Word of Advice

• Make sure that the business continuity plan
  outline includes the occurrence of equipment and
  application failure and that there is room for
  resumption in case you come under what they call
  an internet attack. Also, the plan must tell
  you what to do when floods, earthquakes and other
  natural disasters play spoilsport.
• However, for the plan to work, you must devise a
  good one in the first place.
• Interestingly, doing so is easy if you have a
  template, one that doesnt need you to get the
  hang of some complex business continuity planning
  software and is easy to use.

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2 Examples of How Planning for Disaster Recovery
Is Not the Same as Business Continuity Planning
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• Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity are
  often used interchangeably.
• However the truth is that theres a slight
  difference between the two. The former for one
  primarily focuses on the IT T (Information
  Technology Telecommunication) aspects of a
  business.
• The latter, on the other hand, covers all or most
  of the critical processes. In other words, a plan
  for continuity is more likely to be comprehensive.

Continued
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• Lets consider these examples to develop a better
  understanding of how (and if) the two are
  different
• Example 1 Say, an earthquake occurs. The process
  of resuming business after that earthquake can be
  seen as recovery.

And if you had planned for it in advance, the
resumption part that is, what you actually did
was disaster recovery planning (DRP). That said,
even when you plan for relatively small
disruptive events, such as malfunctioning of
software caused by a computer virus, you are
working on DRP.
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• Example 2 Suppose, your key staffers exit the
  company. Or for that matter, some of them are not
  well. Whatever the situation may be, you must
  continue operating, right? Thats where a
  business continuity plan (BCP) can come in handy
  because its aimed at making you overcome
  challenges that you may face from time to time.

But of course, its not only a business that
needs some planning. Those who offer emergency
services (police, paramedics, and fire brigade)
can also benefit from disaster recovery planning
software because the kind of events they deal
with often involve a substantial loss of life.
These events, call them catastrophic, if you may,
do not (or seldom) call for a BCP therein lies
the difference!
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