Sirius Solutions Blog

Is your business Disaster Recovery Plan ready to cope with a real emergency?  A good way for you to find out is to perform a complete evaluation.  At a recent gathering of the Association of Contingency Planners, South Texas Chapter, we met with workplace contingency planning professionals and shared our thoughts on things to consider when developing and reviewing Disaster Recovery Plans.  A summary of our discussion follows.

A good Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) consists of three key elements: people, processes and technology.  All too often people are left out of the equation - yet one of the most important steps to ensure recovery is getting others involved in the planning process.  Many companies will spend significant time developing a DRP that is ineffective because process owners were not involved in the planning.

There are several reasons for performing an evaluation.  One important reason is to communicate to management or insurance providers that all of the elements of a good DRP are included in your plan and that the plan has been tested.  Other reasons for regular evaluations are to identify control gaps, comply with government regulations and ensure business process owners are held accountable. 

Lastly, a third party evaluation of the DRP, whether internal or external, provides added value to an organization.  Similar to having a co-worker proofread an important document, a third party evaluation brings more objectivity and validity to the findings. 

   categorized under:  Business Processes, Compliance, Contingency Planning, Controls and Processes, Disaster Recovery Plan