Category: Disaster Recovery

Building Resilience in the Hybrid World

What can we all do to embed & improve awareness of Business Continuity in this new workplace reality? 

This week (16 – 20 May 2022) is Business Continuity Awareness week. 

BCAW (Business Continuity Awareness Week) is a global campaign to raise awareness of the importance of business continuity, its basic and essential best practices, and how to instil it within the organisational culture. 

In the last 24 months life changed for us all and in some ways forever, including how we all work.  The pandemic was a real test to our resilience both as human beings and businesses. As we start to come out of the pandemic and move into the recovery phase of our Business Continuity Plans, it is important that we stay flexible and keep reviewing, updating and exercising our Business Continuity Plans.

In this new work environment, companies all need to rethink the way that they embed, validate and raise awareness of their Business Continuity Plans. That is why the theme of this year’s Business Continuity Awareness week is Building Resilience in the Hybrid World.  

We have compiled a list of our Compliance’s top tips to support you with your business continuity plans and activities.

Tip 1: Update your BIAs and Business Continuity Plans. When did you last update them and do they reflect your most recent ways of working, including hybrid working? 

Focus on your purpose 

Ultimately, you need to understand which internal and external activities, including your clients’ are most critical and timebound.  This starts with your Business Impact Analysis (BIAs). BIAs should be focused on your clients and end users, their SLAs and the critical services, resources and suppliers that are required to deliver these. Business Continuity Plans should tell you how you will deliver these most critical services in the event of an incident.  

Tip 2: Embrace BC incidents. Think of them as an opportunity to collaborate, learn new skills and improve client satisfaction.  

Spell out the benefits and opportunities of Business Continuity to your Team Members 

Business Continuity is an opportunity for us all to grow and become more resilient both as individuals and as a business. Business Continuity events often present opportunities for us to work with other teams and expand our skills because we have to think on our feet and adapt to the given situation. Sometimes it forces us to be more creative with how and when we deliver products and services with the least amount of disruption. When your clients know that you can deliver in the most difficult and unexpected circumstances, this increases their trust in you and improves client satisfaction.  

Tip 3: Improving Business Continuity awareness is not about just about attending a training course You know it’s been successfully embedded when it is thought about in every aspect of your services and supply chain and every Team Member is aware of the part that they play in keeping the business running in the event of an incident.  

Improve Business Continuity awareness and training 

Promote thinking about Business Continuity in every aspect of your processes. This might include the next time you select a new supplier (what would happen if they were no longer around?) or how you train your team and ensure that knowledge is shared. Get your team involved in exercising your plans. Share lessons learned and successes from any incidents.

Tip 4: Expect the unexpected. Engage the relevant stakeholders before a situation becomes an incident. Sometimes a situation can become a major incident within minutes or hours. It will be much easier to stand down a team if the worst does not happen, than to create one and scale it up if it does. Raise the alarm early and be better prepared and better able to react more quickly if the worst happens. 

Be prepared before an incident arises 

If there is potential for a situation to become a Business Continuity incident or crisis, engage your line manager and your Compliance team at the earliest opportunity. Your Compliance team will then decide whether it is necessary to put the crisis management team on alert or to invoke an incident.  

Information & Data: The Heart of Your Organisation

As both a member of the IRM Society (Information and Records Management Society) and a sponsor of the IRMS Conference OASIS Group were due to be in Birmingham this week for the annual conference programme and festivities.

Due to COVID-19 the conference has rightly been moved to ensure the safety of delegates, sponsors, speakers and other attendees. Whilst the conference may have moved dates the theme is very much appropriate for the times we currently find ourselves in.

“Information & Data: The Heart of Your Organisation”

This has never been truer, or more obvious, than right now with the world reliant on data being accessible to Team Members working from home, or Frontline workers requiring data from colleagues that they can no longer see face-to-face.

It is easy to forget just how reliant we are on information and data when it is available within easy reach (both physically and digitally). Furthermore, data has become so prevalent in business that we are in danger of having ‘too much’ data to deal with.

For many organisations home working had never seemed an option to consider, as we all navigate through our ‘new normal’ however working practices are constantly being reassessed. Processes or procedures we thought most appropriate for our businesses or organisations are now being questioned, not because they were wrong, but are they the best options for us in 2020 and beyond.

Herein lies the question that I have been pondering;

Will COVID-19 impact how organisations shape business strategy to place Information & Data at the heart of their organisation?

The answer I come to is simply, yes. But this isn’t just a simple question, it opens up so many more;

  • what changes will be made?
  • how will they be implemented?
  • when will they come into effect?
  • will there be regulatory implications?
  • will budgets be increased to support new initiatives?

It would be impossible to answer all of these questions in one specific way for every industry or fit each individual business into a neat standardised action plan. For starters the data we hold or analyse varies by not only sector or industry, but by the individual companies that make up our economies.

Shift to digital

As a business we have seen a shift towards digital services in industries or sectors that were previously tentative about committing to a digital transformation strategy. That is not to say these organisations did not want to implement digital strategies, they very much did, instead they were cautious in selecting which strategy would work for them around existing processes and procedures.

The COVID-19 pandemic has removed these roadblocks as the existing processes and procedures are no longer fit for the current business environment, most notably home working. Whether this paradigm shift is our ‘new normal’ will become more evident over the coming months and years.  

Whatever happens we know that professional members of the IRM Society will be doing their best to drive positive change within their organisations. As is the case with information and records management professionals across the globe I am sure.

Your thoughts

We are interested to hear your thoughts on how COVID-19 will impact organisations in shaping business strategy to place Information & Data at the heart of their organisation. Join the conversation via social media.

The Ultimate Disaster Recovery Checklist

When it comes to data backup and disaster recovery, preparation is paramount. Preparing your organisation before disaster strikes is key to maintaining business continuity and limiting downtime.

With OASIS’ easy to follow Disaster Recovery Checklist your organisation can prepare for unforeseen events

Step 1: Audit your Existing Backup and Recovery Plan

Understand what you currently have in place. When analysing your existing business continuity solution consider:

  • Whether you have a disaster recovery solution in place.
  • How frequently the disaster recovery process has been tested.
  • How much downtime the current backup solution incurs.
  • What volume of data is at risk.
  • What is the financial cost of downtime to your business?

Visit our business continuity FAQs for further insight.

Step 2: Stress Test

Identify potential hazards and the most likely sources of a data loss/breach or failure. Are threats likely to be limited to one machine, or will it affect entire systems. By knowing your risks you can evaluate the most critical systems and their underlying hardware and software vulnerabilities.

Step 3: Conduct an Impact Assessment

Gauge the likely impact of a disaster on your organisation by identifying the most common trigger events and documenting the potential financial, operational and reputational consequences such events are likely to incur.

Step 4: Establish Recovery Goals

Identify critical systems and prioritise recovery tasks. Identify which information you should recover from (ie. which restore points to use). Identify a suitable duration for your disaster recovery process – taking into account the cost of downtime to your organisation. (Please note: With our business continuity service, you can recover your data within 6 seconds and our service allows backups to take place as regular as every 5 minutes, reducing any live data loss to a minimum).

Step 5: Develop a Disaster Recovery Action Plan

Develop a disaster recovery procedure that is consistent with your end goal – be that file restore, local virtualisation or off-site virtualisation. A one size fits all approach might not be best, clearly identify the incidents under which a disaster recovery plan will be invoked and identify under which circumstances full or partial recoveries are necessary. Ensure that any plan provides an orderly resumption of services prioritising the business units or functions according to their needs.

Step 6: Develop an Incident Response Team

This team would be responsible for implementing an operational contingency plan if disaster strikes. OASIS’ business continuity service reduces the need for this requirement by providing an offsite business continuity team who proactively manage your backups and recoveries from a remote location, when needed.

Step 7: Create an Incident Response Report

The incident response report should:

  • Identify what precipitated the failure, which ongoing issues need to be addressed, what can be done better in future disaster recovery scenarios and how have standards and protocols changed post disaster.
  • Verify the recovery and functionality with users once the backup is complete. (ie make sure that all users can access resources and applications)

Step 8: Test and Update

Your business continuity plan should be continually tested and updated, making sure to identify any deficiencies and ensure its future viability. With OASIS’ business continuity service this is provided as a matter of course, through an annual “proof of concept” full restoration exercise, complete with post-event report.

Find out more about our business continuity service

If you would like to speak with a disaster recovery specialist please use our online form or email info@oasisgroup.com.