IT Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning
Our IT disaster recovery and business continuity planning service is designed to ensure that our clients implement plans or procedures which reduce the time between a critical disaster incident and its remediation.
IT disaster recovery (ITDR) is designed to ensure the continuation of major IT functions in the event of a disaster and to secure the timely resumption of business activities to their normal state of operation.
Unplanned system outages can result from viruses, hacker attacks, computer malfunction, electric power failures, natural disaster, etc. The ITDR element of this service creates a series of activities that minimise the impact of unplanned system outages on critical business processes.
The business continuity planning (BCP) element of this service helps our clients develop and maintain their business continuity provision. This is a form of risk management that means being prepared for the threat to your business being interrupted by future external and/or internal factors.
We typically deliver this service for clients who either want to be aligned or certified against the ISO22301: business continuity management standard.
Why Would You Need This Service?
The ITDR and BCP service identifies how unexpected disruption might affect your business. This service will help with the prevention, detection and response to disruption and the recovery of your IT and business services in the event of a failure.
A cost effective ITDR and BCP service is especially useful for businesses who cannot justify the cost of a full-time business continuity manager. Beyond recovery, the business continuity element is required to mitigate against future incidents. EAL will analyse your business in terms of what could fail within your IT estate, a process which improve insurance rates against risks.
The current trend of increasing cybersecurity threats has made businesses more aware of the risks of cyber-attacks and the importance of being able to respond to and recover from such attacks, and quickly return to normal operations.
How We Deliver This Service
The need for ITDR is increasing with the increase of system complexity. If businesses do not properly plan for such events, system downtime can cost thousands and even millions of pounds per minute. Knowing that the recovery from the loss of productivity and data is long, painful, and very costly, a sound disaster recovery plan is crucial to protect the well-being and survival of your business.
We will review and assess the organisation and environment to establish an ITDR plan in alignment with the ISO 23001 and ISO 22301 and a business continuity plan in alignment with ISO 27031 (ICT continuity best practice).
Business continuity is the proactive plan needed to avoid and mitigate the future risks associated with a disruption of operations. We will define the steps to be taken before, during and after a disruption, to maintain the financial viability of a business.
A recovery time objective (RTO) is the target time you set for the recovery of your IT and business activities after a cyber-attack or a natural disaster has struck. Recovery point objective is focused on data and your business’s tolerance to the loss of your data. RPO is determined by looking at the time between data backups and the amount of data that could be lost in between backups.
Delivery of this service includes:
- Identifying business critical activities;
- Performing a risk assessment;
- Provision of expert ongoing support by a qualified practitioner;
- Ensuring that the fixed cost of service allows business continuity to be built into the budget;
- Ensuring that business continuity is not allowed to get out of date;
- Ensures you are ready and prepared for a future incident;
- Avoiding having to annually bid for a business continuity budget;
- Maintaining the investment in business continuity;
- Ensuring that your business continuity is up to date with the latest techniques;
- Defining recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO) are two of the most important parameters of a disaster recovery or data protection plan;
- Reducing the cost of risk insurance.
Deliverables
- Disaster recovery plan;
- Business impact analysis (RTO/RPO);
- Business risk analysis;
- IT disaster recovery strategy (hot site, recovery and resilience);
- ITDR architecture design;
- Network systems failover architecture design;
- Primary site infrastructure services upgrade;
- Secondary site infrastructure design;
- High availability and data replication;
- IT contingency planning;
- Business continuity plan;
- Documented activities necessary to prepare the organisation for possible emergencies (including strategic recovery measures);
- Detailed activities for dealing with the disaster recovery phase;
- Procedures for managing business recovery;
- Plan for testing the business recovery process;
- Plan for training staff in business recovery;
- Procedure for keeping the plan up to date.
Typical Outcomes
The key outcome for this service is the minimisation of any downtime and data loss.
- Gaining an understanding of the impact of IT service outage on your business and the required recovery targets (RTO/RPO);
- Reducing the business impact of unexpected disruption incidents;
- Minimising the downtime and consequences of disruption incidents;
- Coordination of ITDR, BCP and continuity of operations planning (COOP);
- Ability to achieve ISO 23001, ISO 22301 and ISO 27031 certifications;
- Improvement your business’s resilience and its capability to manage future disruptions;
- Maintaining an ability to manage uninsurable risks;
- Protecting and enhancing your business’s reputation and brand;
- Gaining a competitive advantage by demonstrating to the market your capability for restoring a business’s ability to supply its key products and services when disrupted.
Case Studies
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