Awareness Helped New Orleans Company Operate During, After Katrina

Woody Allen said that 80 percent of life is just showing up. Columbus Data Services (CDS) could draw a parallel from Allen’s remark to disaster recovery: 80 percent of disaster recovery is just knowing where you are. Because CDS manages ATM networks for banks all over the country, it had planned for a catastrophic storm… Continue reading Awareness Helped New Orleans Company Operate During, After Katrina

Maximizing IT Uptime When Disaster Strikes

When we think of disaster, we tend to think of fires, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, and now terrorism. But an event does not need to be large-scale or catastrophic to qualify as a disaster. Human error, malicious behavior, and even the complexity of the systems themselves can bring about high-impact outages that affect your service levels… Continue reading Maximizing IT Uptime When Disaster Strikes

Diversity In Data Protection

Diversity is a very important and under-discussed concept in data protection. Analysis on infrastructure resilience is essentially an exercise in probabilities. The disciplines of business continuity and disaster recovery are primarily about understanding and mitigating risk. Companies in the insurance industry employ actuaries to do sophisticated analysis of risk, focusing on the probabilities of certain… Continue reading Diversity In Data Protection

Moving Beyond Pure Disaster Recovery:

The worst term in any IT-related scenario is without a doubt “downtime.” The constant threat of impending security breaches continue to arise day after day with the potential to create mass destruction in the functioning of organizations. Therefore, it is imperative for organizations to not only have a disaster recovery plan in place for the… Continue reading Moving Beyond Pure Disaster Recovery:

Disaster Recovery Planning for All Contingencies

Today, threats that affect business continuity are ever-present. Catastrophic weather events appear with greater frequency and without warning. Hurricanes, tornados, and floods are carrying more destructive force. And then there are earthquakes, ice storms, and lightning strikes. The terrorist threat continues, especially in the form of anthrax and other white powder attacks on the mailstream.… Continue reading Disaster Recovery Planning for All Contingencies

Disaster Recovery Planning for the World at Large

Enterprise and community disaster recovery planners provide a valuable service to their entities. They help assure, or at least re-establish, the life and health of that entity should disaster strike. As the world gets more complex, and the interactions among its components become more complicated as well, disaster recovery planners need to take a wider… Continue reading Disaster Recovery Planning for the World at Large

The Role of Emergency Notification Technology in Pandemic Preparedness & Response

With each new confirmed case of human bird flu, the world comes closer to a possible outbreak of an influenza pandemic. The effects of a pandemic would be devastating to societies and markets across the globe. Yet within such an environment, businesses must persist to operate as efficiently and effectively as possible. Careful preparation that… Continue reading The Role of Emergency Notification Technology in Pandemic Preparedness & Response

Preempt the Worst and Hope for the Best

An ex-Special Forces sergeant who worked for me on an executive protection detail often described his mission as “Preparing for the worst and hoping for the best. If Columbine and Virginia Tech define “the worst” for which we must prepare, then we had better be highly successful at hoping. Assailants like Harris and Klebold and… Continue reading Preempt the Worst and Hope for the Best

A Paradigm Shift in a Service-Oriented Industry

Every organization will have a different flavor of doing business impact analysis. The type of industry, the size of the organization, and the culture are some of the important factors that influence the discipline of business impact analysis. As information technology is advancing, it is becoming more and more an enabler of business rather than… Continue reading A Paradigm Shift in a Service-Oriented Industry

Are Executive Boards Ready to Welcome a CCO?

As businesses rely more on IT as a driver of business decisions and growth, business continuity has started to command more attention higher up the corporate food chain. One indicator of the growing importance of business continuity is the new role of chief continuity officer or CCO. Although today very few organizations have a CCO… Continue reading Are Executive Boards Ready to Welcome a CCO?