Disaster Recovery Planning (DRP) / Business Continuity Planning (BCP)

When most people think of "disasters," they usually envision earthquakes, tornados, tsunamis, and other large acts of nature.  For a business, however, a disaster could be a key server crashing, a cash register or other point of sale device going down, a fire in the data center / computer closet, or something as small as a hard drive crash or the loss of a critical file. 

If you were to experience a 'disaster,' how would you continue providing your product or service?  How would you order from vendors?  What if the vendors are also in the affected area?  How would you contact customers with phones and/or email (or even the availability of that contact information)?  What would you tell them?  How would you address the media?  How would your organization's level of preparedness be portrayed to your investors, vendors, and customers?  How would that affect your organization's overall brand and image?  How would you pay your employees?  How would employees know when and where to report back to work? 

Most organizations can live without critical resources for a short amount of time, but what if those resources were out of commission for weeks or months?  Who would make critical decisions if your top executives were not available?  Who is authorized to make decisions and commit resources towards recovery efforts in those situations?  Have arrangements been made with banks and credit card providers to bypass typical controls (e.g., spending limits) in those situations for those people?

There are many things that need to be considered, and there are many different strategies to address those needs depending on many factors regarding your business (size, industry, nature of product/service, redundancy of supporting technology and resources, etc.).  The right one is different for most companies and we have a methodology to help yours prepare to succeed in those circumstances.