Business Continuity Plans are designed to allow an organization to continue to exist and operate during and after an event such as a hurricane. Private companies risk going out of business if they close and their customers and suppliers cannot interact with them. The university is not likely to go out of business, so our plans can be less rigorous than the private sector's.

Devising a plan to keep critical services running in case of a disaster such as hurricane. This doesn't necessarily mean you have to keep the servers up during extended power outages or flooding, but you should be able to resume operation as soon as campus re-opens and your staff come back.

Backups of the data, installation media, and documentation on policies and procedures should all be made and kept in secure facilities. Off-site copies will allow you to recover if your building falls victim to fire, severe flooding, etc. which make the contents inaccessible. Regular updates of the off-site copies are imperative to making the recovery process work.

Make full backups often. Only a full backup will have all of the data you need, and more recent full backups mean fewer or smaller incremental backups will be needed to get up-to-date. Paper copies of critical information like contact lsits, policies and procedures should also be updated and printed out regularly.

Store a backup offsite regularly. If the building's contents are destroyed, it doesn't matter how recent the last set of full backups in the office were. Test the restore process, using the off-site copies to see how much difference there is between the running and restored system. If the backups and documentation are too old, the difference may be greater than your plans anticipate.

Know who does what tasks, who is their backup, and what the chain of command are. If some people are unable to return to work immediately, how will you cope without them. Note: if you think that you just wouldn't operate without some people, then consider what happens when they take another job, or fall ill. Being prepared can help outside of full-blown disasters.

Corporate continuity planners also include plans for alternate work locations for every emplyoee, how to house, feed and pay them if the main office is closed, and how to contact everyone if the building and HR files are inaccessible. Your plan should at least consider how to contact people if everyone cannot make it to campus.

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Last updated: May 02, 2006 (04:50:28 PM EDT)
URL: http://www.clasnet.ufl.edu/security/ism/templates/continuity.shtml