Business Continuity Planning (BCP)

What would your business do, right now, if your premises were suddenly inaccessible due to evacuation, without power due to blackout or subject to fire, flood or other environmental disaster?

What steps would you take, this second, if your server room was completely without power, your computer systems were attacked and went offline, your network or phone system failed catastrophically or your staff were injured?

Face Disaster with a Smile

Smart businesses are prepared for such emergencies and take them in their stride. Almost everyone else goes out of business very quickly. While insurers may write you a cheque, usually months later, insurance won't help if all your customers have left.

Disaster Recovery refers to the clean-up and recovery after a disaster. Business Continuity Planning (BCP) refers to a series of systems, logistical plans and procedures, prepared in advance. They ensure that business-critical operations can continue uninterrupted, during and immediately after a disaster, until the business recovers and normal operations resume.

This ensures revenue and customers are retained, the business can continue operations, staff are protected and recovery cost and effort is minimised.

When disaster strikes, it's far too late to open the Yellow Pages and start looking for help.

The key word is "Plan". It is essential all issues are identified, procedures developed, tested and widely known well before an incident, such that they can be activated effectively. An 'all emergencies' approach means that your BCP system can work in a 'simple' disaster, such as power outage, right up to a major catastrophe.

Designing and Executing BCP

Calamity can assist your organisation to develop a premium quality BCP from scratch. We perform analysis to identify business-critical assets and processes. We will determine what resources will be required to ensure availability "in case of emergency" such as site-outage, equipment outage or logical outage (systems down). Our consultants will work with you to implement procedures that can be rapidly executed to ensure minimal disruption.

If suitable, Calamity's 24x7 high-availability monitoring ability can be activated as part of your Emergency Communications System, to pass voice, SMS and email messages to staff, stakeholders and other parties, in Australia and abroad, or to update your own recorded messages or websites on your behalf. Our mission is your peace of mind.

BCP Testing and Training

Whether you have an existing BCP or have just completed development of one, it is important to formally test it, review the outcomes and adjust accordingly. Periodic review also ensures contact-lists, backup details and other important BCP elements are up to date and correct. Like proofreading, third-party review allows you to find errors or issues you may have missed due to over-familiarity.

The best possible BCP is useless if staff aren't fully familiar with it. Calamity can help you review your plans, from a simple 'walk-through' at a desk, all the way to staging a mock critical incident in order to really see "what happens". Simulation based training is regarded as one of the best ways to prepare people for critical incidents. In an emergency, under extremely high stress, humans tend to revert to their training. Sufficient and repetitive training ensures correct habits are developed upon which staff can fall-back when 'under fire'.

Calamity's unique experience and qualifications in law-enforcement and security training, allow us to conduct exercises quite unlike anything you may have experienced. This is no boring fire drill. Your staff will appreciate it and even enjoy it. More importantly, you will improve your chances of business survival and prosperity, guaranteed.

The need for BCP

Most organisations require some form of planning for disaster. Here are just some of the types of organisation for whom some form of planning is essential:

• Banking and finance
• insurance
• government at all levels
• schools and universities
• daycare and boarding facilities
• media outlets
• data centres and hosting providers
• call centres
• manufacturing and industrial sites
• shopping centres and retail outlets
• outsourced service providers
• professional service providers
• health providers
• security providers
• legal services
• emergency services

Contact Calamity today and discuss how we can help you to be prepared and ready.