BUSINESS CONTINUITY

BY HUI ZHENG

What’s Business continuity?

• Business continuity is the activity performed by an organization to ensure that critical business functions will be available to customers, suppliers, regulators, and other entities that must have access to those functions.

Three Important Definition

• High availability Ability to performance the service during

any kind of failure.

Three Important Definition

• High availability Ability to performance the service during

any kind of failure. • Continuous operations A system maintains continuity of service to

internal systems and customers through an uninterrupted delivery of critical service or functions

Three Important Definition

• Disaster Recovery Ability to performance recovery from the

disaster at different locations.

Why Business Continuity?

• Does everything worth?

DOWNTIME: The End-to-End Impact

.

FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE

+ Revenue recognition+ Cash flow+ Lost discounts A/P+ Payment guarantees+ Credit rating+ Stock price

REVENUE+ Direct loss+ Compensatory

payments+ Lost future revenue+ Billing losses+ Investment losses

$Know your

downtime costs

OTHER EXPENSES+ Temporary employees,

equipment rental, overtime costs, extra shipping costs, travel expenses, legal obligations

DAMAGED REPUTATION+ Customers+ Suppliers+ Financial markets+ Banks+ Business partners+ Media/analysts

PRODUCTIVITY+ Number of employees

affected x hours out x hourly rate

Source; Gartner Group, Inc

Information as a Strategic Asset

• The value of your data• Protection of business critical information• A massive increase in data volume and complexity• The reliability of back-up and recovery

DOWNTIME: Perceived Areas of Vulnerability

• In a recent survey CFOs were asked "In which of the following areas do you feel your company is most vulnerable?”

• Their responses were:– Disaster preparedness/recovery 37%– Security of information systems 24%– Protection of intellectual capital 11%– Detection of accounting fraud 10%– Theft by company employees 2%– Other 3%– None/not vulnerable 11%– Don't know/no answer 92%

Source: Robert Half Management Resources

DOWNTIME: Perception vs. Reality

28%21%

15%12%

6%6%

4%4%4%

2%2%2%

3%9%

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30%

Terrorism/War

Fire

Power failure/Loss of power

Loss of Business/revenue/Customers

Economic slowdown/Stockmarket crash

Under funding

None

Source: Business Continuity Institute, UK

DOWNTIME: Perception vs. Reality

.REALITYCauses of Unplanned Downtime

20%Environmental

factors, Hardware, Operating system, Power, Disasters

Source: Gartner Group, Inc

40%Application

failure

40%Operator errors

DOWNTIME: The cost• “On average, businesses lose US$108,000 of revenue for every

hour that their IT infrastructure is down.” (Gartner)

• Cost (US dollars) to businesses of unplanned downtime per hour by industry:

• Brokerage Service $6.48 million and much more • Energy $2.8 million and more• Telecom $2 million and more• Manufacturing $1.6 million• Retail $636,000• Health Care $6.48 million• Media $90,000

Business Continuity Management

• A compilation of processes that identifies and evaluates potential risks to an organization and develops the organization's resilience by ensuring critical objectives are met the resources necessary to achieve those objectives are available.

Key Elements

• Executive Management Commitment • Cooperate• Standard or policy• Efficient response

Business Continuity Plan

• Identify Risks – Triage to assess all processed

• Develop Plans for Everything• Test and Exercise the Plans• Layer Business Plan & Disaster Plan

BCP

• Analysis• Solution design• Implementation• Testing and organizational acceptance• Maintenance

BCP Life Cycle

.

Source; wikipedia.org

BCP

• AnalysisBusiness Impact Analysis (BIA)Threat and Risk Analysis (TRA)Impact ScenariosRecovery requirement

External Risks

• Risk present in natural disaster• Labor Strife• The possible failure of business partners• Suppliers• Public utilities• Transportation• Telecommunication, and so on

Prioritize Risk Factors

• Personal Safety Risk• Services Risk• Operational Risk• Revenue Risk• Liability Risk• Good Will (Societal) Risk

Imagine in below Scenarios

• No power• No phone service• No water• No government serviceWhat will you do? Panic?

Develop Scenarios

• How bad will the “big one be” be?Extended Power, water, or telecom outages?Supply chain disruptions?Civil Unrest?

• Develop various scenarios and pick which ones to plan for.

• Plan for the worst but expect for the best situation

Emergency Management Plan

• Work with local and regional disaster agencies

• Assess special problems with disasters• Review and revise existing disaster plan• Look for new areas for disaster plan• Include disaster recovery plan