Preparing Your Mission-Critical Functions and Risk Assessment

Putting together an effective disaster recovery plan

If an incident were to occur - whether it be accidental, manmade or a natural disaster - what components of your business would you want to have up and running again the fastest? In order to have a successful recovery plan, you need to evaluate your critical business functions and your acceptable risk associated with each.

Each business has different levels of risk tolerance that can be afforded for each business function:

• Personnel
• Power
• Transportation
• Computer Network
• Communications
• Structural Integrity

How important are these elements to your business and how long can you operate without them - an hour, a day, or a week? For instance, your business may rely so heavily on email communication that being without email for a period of hours could significantly impact your ability to function, whereas being without telephone communication for a period of days may be an acceptable risk.
Once the mission-critical functions are identified and the acceptable risks are associated to each, you can begin to prioritize and allocate necessary resources to the top priority items and begin to formulate contingency plans that are effective and realistic.

Investigating alternative solutions to high risk functions

Now that you have identified where you are the most vulnerable, the next step is to prioritize what measures will be taken to continue to operate without those functions that are at risk. For example:

• If phone communication is down, we will ______________.
• If we have no access to fuel, we will ___________________.
• If key personnel are missing, we will _____________________.
• If our building is damaged, we will ______________________.

It’s not just about the weather

Although hurricane season is approaching and it is what people typically think about when they hear the word ‘Disaster’, it comes in all shapes and sizes:

Natural Earthquake Tornado/Wind Hurricane Flood Volcanic Severe Weather Wildfire	Human Caused Sabotage Product Tampering Sexual Harassment Fraud Terrorist Attack Embezzlement	Accidents Fire Water Damage Building Collapse Environmental Human Error	Loss of: Key Employees Senior Leader Subject Matter Expert
Security Privacy Viruses Hackers Data Theft Counterfeiters	Technological Software Failure Hardware Failure Power Outage Data Corruption Systems Failure	Political Strike Riot Act of War Civil Disturbances Biological Threat	Emerging Threats Water Shortage Media Crisis Globalization Pandemics Product Liability

Call the experts at ACF Consulting

You owe it to yourself, your employees, and your clients to maintain business continuity in the event of a disaster. Let the professionals at ACF analyze and create a readiness plan that best suits your company.

What have you done to prepare for the event of a disaster? Let us know in the comments below!