Filed under: KingsBridge Disaster Recovery | Tags: business continuity, business continuity software, business disaster, business impact analysis, concordia, Continuity of Operations, COOP, costa, costa concordia, disaster preparation, disaster recovery, disaster recovery software, KingsBridge Disaster Recovery, Phoenix software
In 2012, KingsBridge will be focusing on talking about the disruption side of Recovery planning. If you have spent any time in this field, or are new to it you’ve seen the millions of photos of hurricanes, earthquakes, fires and devastating floods. Not to make light of these incidents, but for the most part they aren’t likely to impact your business and as you have no doubt learned “If it isn’t likely, don’t plan for it!” or “Don’t worry, we’ve never had any trouble before so why bother to plan now?”. While both of these are valid excuses, realistically you should be planning for what will impact your business… Namely, “Disruptions” not “Disasters”. Let’s take at what I mean:
These top three issues cause nearly 50% of business disruptions: Power failure, IT Hardware failure and Network failure. Hurricanes, Tornados, Fires and Earthquake combined only account for 15%. – Forrester/Disaster Recovery Journal 2010 Global DR Survey
Power Failures, IT Failures aren’t nearly as catastrophic or sexy to surround your message with. As a result, they get overlooked for the more spectacular disasters. But realistically, how many power failures are you likely to have compared to Earthquakes? Plan for the incidents with the highest likelihood.
Still not going along with this train of thought? Let’s use a “disruption” that is in the news right now: the sinking of the Costa Concordia (off the coast of Italy). Most people would look at this and shrug their shoulders saying that these things happen. True, they do, but it comes as a $95 Million disruption to Carnival’s (parent company) revenue from that ship, the ship will be out of service for a year (if not longer) and Carnival is still paying the $580 Million it took the build the ship! The impact of this incident is being felt around the cruising industry and will likely cancel any chance of profits Carnival hoped to make this year. This doesn’t even touch the 14% share decrease that Carnival suffered this week and satisfy the 36% of booked customers who called with concerns. All told, the cost of this disruption will be almost impossible to calculate. All due to the captain of the ship taking it off course to “show off” to others on the boat.
While this does paint a bleak outlook for Carnival and the cruising industry, it will bounce back (eventually) and people will return to their ships just as they did when the Titanic sank 100 years ago.
Is the sinking of the Costa Concordia an Earthquake or a Fire? No. Outside of Carnival Cruise lines is it considered a Disaster (in the BCP/DRP sense)? No. In the grand scheme of Carnival and the cruising industry is it a disruption? YES! As it is more likely to occur (and have an impact on Carnival) than any fire, earthquake or drought.
How does this relate to your business?
Look at your business from a disruption perspective; snowstorms, power failures, computer failures, etc… These are things that happen every day and will never make the news, but will immediately impact your business. Recovery planning is all about limiting the impact to your business and your bottom line. So the next time you talk about Recovery Planning and just shrug it off with “it’ll never happen to me” thoughts, remember this article and make sure you aren’t going to go down with the ship!
RIP to those who died while a passenger or working on the Costa Concordia.
About KingsBridge
KingsBridge offers private businesses and government organizations a unique combination of industry knowledge and cost-effective disaster recovery / business continuity solutions. KingsBridge products and seminars provide the tools to assess possible threats and create tailored plans which mitigate risks and minimize losses in the event of a disruption to business. KingsBridge is headquartered in Ogdensburg, New York, with an office in Ottawa, Canada. For more information visit us at www.DisasterRecovery.com.
Filed under: Knowledge | Tags: business continuity, business continuity software, business disaster, business impact analysis, Continuity of Operations, COOP, disaster preparation, disaster recovery, disaster recovery software, KingsBridge Disaster Recovery, Phoenix software, sharepoint
Welcome to another “Feature of the Week” update. Keeping up to date (pardon the pun) on the most current DRP/BCP plans for your organization is critically important. As we all know, keeping DRP/BCP plans current and accurate is an ongoing challenge. Ensuring that everyone involved in acting upon those updated plans when disaster strikes however is probably even more important, if not more challenging. Having a DRP/BCP Team Member working with out-dated recovery plans can do more damage than the disaster itself. Therefore keeping Team Members current on plan changes and providing them with access to the active plan it very important.
Phoenix for SharePoint leverages Microsoft SharePoint’s ability to send email notifications to Team Members whenever DRP/BCP plan documents are created, changed, or deleted.
How It Works
First, we have configured Phoenix for SharePoint to leverage the SharePoint Server’s Outgoing E-Mail Settings configuration. SharePoint uses the Internet Information Service’s Simple Mail Transfer Protocol feature, which needs to be configured first. Once the email SMTP service is configured on the SharePoint server then we configure SharePoint to support outgoing email in the Central Administration tool. This configuration is done by the SharePoint Farm Administrator.
Once this is configured we are ready to proceed from an Team Manager or Team Member perspective to receive immediate email notification whenever changes are made to active DRP/BCP plans. That’s right, a Team Manager can assign a Team Member to receive notification to plan updates.
In Phoenix for SharePoint the Plan Editor is used to edit and modify DRP/BCP plans. These plans are then published to a Published Plans Document Library. Team Members can subscribe to email notifications for a Document Library. The desire to receive plan update notifications is configured within any SharePoint Document Library or List and can be done by a Site Owner or Site Member.
The Team Member can decide what kind of Notifications they want to receive, the level of change detail the notices are based upon, the frequency in which the notifications are sent, and when they are sent. A Team Manager can also decide which Team Members should receive the notifications.
When an email is sent this is what the Team Member receives.
Notice that within the email is a direct link to “View” the new or updated document. In the image above the Team Member would simply click on the “View Team_Response.pdf” URL link to open the updated document. There are also other active URL links that will take the Team Member directly to the Phoenix for SharePoint solution site.
But wait a second….. not without security you don’t. That’s right. Just because a Team Member received an email notifying them to a new or updated DRP/BCP plan doesn’t give them direct access to the plan without proper security credentials. When the Team Member clicks on the email active URL they will be prompted for their secure login credentials.
Once the Team Member logs in securely they will then have access to the new or updated DRP/BCP plan.
With the DRP/BCP plan now open at the local client workstation it can of course be saved locally so that the Team Member has access to the most recent plan in the event that disaster does actually strike the next day.
Of course Phoenix for SharePoint supports other custom features that can be implemented such as Workflows that forward full copies of updated plans to off-site locations in order to ensure that Team Members always have access to current DRP/BCP plan documentation. Please feel free to ask us about additional customization that can be implemented to accomplish your specific requirements.
Phoenix for SharePoint Team
About KingsBridge
KingsBridge offers private businesses and government organizations a unique combination of industry knowledge and cost-effective disaster recovery / business continuity solutions. KingsBridge products and seminars provide the tools to assess possible threats and create tailored plans which mitigate risks and minimize losses in the event of a disruption to business. KingsBridge is headquartered in Ogdensburg, New York, with an office in Ottawa, Canada. For more information visit us at www.DisasterRecovery.com.
Filed under: Knowledge | Tags: business continuity, business continuity software, business disaster, business impact analysis, Continuity of Operations, COOP, disaster preparation, disaster recovery, disaster recovery software, KingsBridge Disaster Recovery, Phoenix software
The Project Management Dashboard component of the Phoenix for SharePoint Standard and Enterprise editions.
DRP/BCP Plan Development Coordinators have a very challenging position in that they have to coordinate the activities of many people in the organization within across different departments and at many different levels of the organization. And many of the people you need to help you develop the organization’s recovery plans are already working at maximum output. Requiring them to assist you in this very important endeavour is often an uphill challenge. Having access to an integrated documentation planning tool is key to your success.
Phoenix for SharePoint offers a complete Project Management Dashboard that is tailored specifically to the DRP/BCP Plan Development Coordinator role. It will help you ensure that documentation planning tasks are assigned and followed up on and that people are accountable for the aspects of this important effort that they have been made responsible for.
The following screen shot is the Project Status landing page for the Phoenix Dashboard. It provides access to a high level view of how the project is progressing. It uses a combination of Task Assignments and Key Performance Indicators (KPI) within a Business Intelligence (BI) portal to provide Management with a very clear status view of the planning process.
There are three default Projects within Phoenix that allow you to get started quickly on your planning and recovery processes. But of course you can always create more projects! The methodology used for the DRP/BCP plan development process is architected as follows:
Project
- Milestones
- Tasks
The Project
For the Project you can define Start and End dates as well as budget expectations. As the Tasks are completed the project Complete status roll up to the associated Milestones, which in turn roll up to the associated Project itself.
Within each Project, Milestones are defined and associated back to the Project.
Finally, Tasks are created and associated with a Milestone, that is in turn associated with a Project.
The DRP/BCP Plan Coordinator can begin to assign Tasks to individual staff. During the process of doing so they identify the Task components:
Assigned To
Start Date
End Date
Cost ($)
Cost in Days
The assigned staff member will receive an email with a link back to the Task so that they can begin to work with it and perform the planning process. Along the way, as they complete the Task they have been assigned they can update their progress and the status of the Task completion.
As staff complete their assigned Task(s) within each Milestone, the Project Status Dashboard will immediately be updated and the progress of the project will reflect their activity. You and Management can keep live track of how the DRP/BCP planning process is proceeding.
Well, there you have another Phoenix Feature of the Week. Plan development and ongoing management of the plan development process is critical to the successful implementation of your DRP/BCP documentation. Phoenix for SharePoint Standard and Enterprise editions enable the Plan Coordinator to stay on top of the process and ensure success.
About KingsBridge
KingsBridge offers private businesses and government organizations a unique combination of industry knowledge and cost-effective disaster recovery / business continuity solutions. KingsBridge products and seminars provide the tools to assess possible threats and create tailored plans which mitigate risks and minimize losses in the event of a disruption to business. KingsBridge is headquartered in Ogdensburg, New York, with an office in Ottawa, Canada. For more information visit us at www.DisasterRecovery.com.
Filed under: Knowledge | Tags: business continuity, business continuity software, COOP, disaster preparation, disaster recovery, disaster recovery software, KingsBridge Disaster Recovery
This is the third instalment of Phoenix for SharePoint integration features that allow our clients to leverage Phoenix within a SharePoint platform to better prepare themselves to restart their business after a disaster.
The KingsBridge Systems’ DRP-BCP planning solution runs on the SharePoint platform. This Phoenix Feature update shows how two products, Microsoft® Office and Microsoft SharePoint®, contribute to the powerful architectural design of the Microsoft Business Productivity Infrastructure (BPI) with a specific focus on business continuity and disaster recovery requirements. The BPI stack approach suggests that only by thinking at a capability level (for example, “What do users want to do?‖), and then adding the right aspects of capability in each place (client, server, and services), can we create desktop applications that also deliver rich server and services capabilities to information workers.
The attached Feature/Function Whitepaper describes how the 2010, 2007, and 2003 versions of Office work together with the 2010, 2007, and 2003 versions of SharePoint technologies. Although we provide an overview of Office and SharePoint features working together in past versions, this paper focuses on the integration features of the Microsoft Office 2010 experience with Microsoft SharePoint 2010.
The scenarios outlined in this paper show examples of how the power of SharePoint 2010 and related servers can be combined with capabilities of one or more Microsoft Office 2010 applications to deliver rich, intuitive, and easy-to-use capabilities directly into the hands of desktop users. The scenarios cover the following value areas:
- Collaboration Without Compromise
- Bring Ideas to Life
- Anywhere Access
- The Practical IT Platform
The paper concludes that to realize the best user experience with Office and SharePoint integration features, organizations should upgrade client programs to Office Professional Plus 2010 and server technologies to SharePoint 2010.
Here below are some clear examples of how Phoenix leverages some of the mobile capabilities that SharePoint brings to the solution as implemented.
For each and every Document Library there is the ability to connect it to a locally installed Microsoft Outlook email / communication installation.
In this example we have connected the SharePoint Published Plans Document Library to a locally installed on a laptop Microsoft Outlook configuration.
When we integrate the SharePoint Farm Server implementation to our locally installed Microsoft Office installation of the Outlook email / communication program we are asked to validate this request.
Click Yes
If not already authenticated to the site the user will be prompted to login.
Phoenix for SharePoint will now download from the Published Plans DocLib to the Outlook software running on the persons Laptop. When they unplug from the network they take all of the Published Plans with them in Outlook.
From here on in whenever anyone else updates the Published Plans Doc Lib, the next time the user connects to corporate network those updated plans will automatically sync down to the laptop.
The same SharePoint <> Outlook integration is true for Calendars and Discussions.
If there is a Department level Calendar on SharePoint, synchronization between it and Outlook on the laptop can also take place. Simply go to the Calendar in SharePoint and select the Library Tab, then select Connect to Outlook. Here I am in the Compliance Site and I clicked on the Compliance Events Quick Launch Menu. Click on the Calendar Tools Tab (a Calendar is a Library List with a different view).
Select Connect to Outlook.
Then click on Allow.
Then Click Yes to connect this SharePoint Calendar to Outlook.
If the user is already Authenticated they will not be prompted to log in again.
The user will now see their own Calendar in Outlook as well as the SharePoint site Calendar.
The same level of integration is true with default Task Lists and Discussion lists on a site.
About KingsBridge
KingsBridge offers private businesses and government organizations a unique combination of industry knowledge and cost-effective disaster recovery / business continuity solutions. KingsBridge products and seminars provide the tools to assess possible threats and create tailored plans which mitigate risks and minimize losses in the event of a disruption to business. KingsBridge is headquartered in Ogdensburg, New York, with an office in Ottawa, Canada. For more information visit us at www.DisasterRecovery.com.
Filed under: Knowledge | Tags: business continuity, business continuity software, business disaster, business impact analysis, Continuity of Operations, COOP, disaster preparation, disaster recovery, disaster recovery software, KingsBridge Disaster Recovery, Phoenix software
In this second of the Phoenix for SharePoint Feature of the Week series we are excited to share with you just how easy it is to work through a Business Impact Analysis process. This process will allow you to quickly define how vulnerable your organization is to threats through a Threat Risk Assessment exercise that will document the recovery of your most important business processes.
Phoenix for SharePoint provides a singular BIA facility that will guide you through the process and while doing so allow you to document both the conclusions and the recovery processes that will help ensure that your organization is back in business quickly and efficiently.
The BIA landing page says it all. Through this section of the Phoenix for SharePoint solution you will perform the TRA and BIA assessments of your organization’s readiness to recover from a disaster. There are six steps in the process.
Step 1: The Threat Risk Assessment
Identifying potential threats specific to an organization is the first step to creating a recovery plan. The Threat Risk Analysis helps identify what threats are relevant to your organization, and what risk it is to your people, your buildings, and the continuity of your business. These threats have been grouped into the following categories:
Natural Threats – caused by the environment
Human Threats – caused by individuals actions
Technical Threats – caused by equipment or technology failure
Step 2: Business Unit Teams
The most effective way to an orderly and timely recovery is to establish teams based on the organizations Business Unit structure. It is important that the teams be established, and tasks identified to be done before, during and after a disaster. During an emergency each team member contributes the skills that they use in their everyday work to the overall response. Each team identified in this section will be required to complete a Business Impact Analysis Survey to identify the business processes that are most crucial to the operations of the organization.
Step 3: Team Business Processes
In this section you will identify all of the business processes that will require recovery and assign them to a Business Unit Team. The Business Unit Team will be responsible for defining how the business process assigned to them will function during an IT outage and the procedures required to restore the systems required to support it.
Step 4: Surveys
One of the basic assumptions behind the BIA is that every component of the organization is reliant upon the continued functioning of every other component, but some are more critical than others. This BIA tool will be used to identify each department’s critical business processes, the maximum tolerable outages, and the resources required to complete each specific function.
For each Business Process identified and associated with a Business Unit Team a Business Process Survey is created. The Business Process Survey is emailed to Team Leader for auctioning and delegation to other team members.
When you click on the Business Process Survey item you are provided with two options. Respond to the survey or view the responses.
The Business Process Survey is designed to help you determine which business processes are the most important ones and also what is the process for performing it without access to the IT systems and the recovery process for the IT systems that the business processes depend upon. When you click on “Respond to this Survey” you are provided with an extensive questionnaire to identify the business process, its importance, and the required elements to recover it within the desired recovery window.
The following two screen images highlight the business process survey questionnaire. Please note that the survey questions can be edited and changed depending on your organization’s requirements for conducting a BIA/TRA process.
Step 5: Preview BIA Plan
Step 5 provides you with an opportunity to review the BIA/TRA results before you publish them. It shows you the BIA/TRA plan results from all of the Business Unit Teams and Business Processes survey results before they are actually published in final form. Simply click on Publish BIA Report button and you will produce a dynamically compiled version of the final BIA/TRA published plan.
Step 6: Published Reports
And this is what the final published plan looks like in PDF form.
But wait, there is more!
When a new BIA/TRA plan is published all of the participants to the BIA Published Plans folder can receive an update notification via email or SMS or our own Phoenix iPhone and BlackBerry Mobile Apps.
Within the Alert Me option the Phoenix for SharePoint plan contributor can select to receive plan update alerts by email or SMS text messages.
When any new BIA/TRA plans are published all of the people that are involved will automatically receive the plan update notification.
About KingsBridge
KingsBridge offers private businesses and government organizations a unique combination of industry knowledge and cost-effective disaster recovery / business continuity solutions. KingsBridge products and seminars provide the tools to assess possible threats and create tailored plans which mitigate risks and minimize losses in the event of a disruption to business. KingsBridge is headquartered in Ogdensburg, New York, with an office in Ottawa, Canada. For more information visit us at www.DisasterRecovery.com.
Filed under: Knowledge | Tags: business continuity, business continuity software, business disaster, business impact analysis, Continuity of Operations, COOP, disaster preparation, disaster recovery, disaster recovery software, KingsBridge Disaster Recovery
One of the really cool things about Phoenix for SharePoint is the integration it provides between the time and tested Phoenix DRP-BCP planning environment and all of the many features that SharePoint 2010 provides. There are two levels of benefits that customers receive by leveraging the KingsBridge Systems’ Phoenix environment within a SharePoint platform:
- WebPart solutions provided by Microsoft
- WebPart solutions provided by all of the Microsoft SharePoint Partners
One of those Microsoft SharePoint Partners is AMREIN Engineering at http://www.amrein.com
Using their unique SharePoint Google Maps WebParts we have integrated the ability to place your Phoenix DRP-BCP plan locations on a map so that you can access then quickly. Many of our enterprise clients have hundreds of locations and for each location they have a DRP-BCP plan site. The Google Map integration allows us to plot on a global map each location within the organization that has a recovery and continuity plan.
In the above Google Map the Plan Coordinator can simply click on the location and select the hyperlink presented and they will arrive at the DRP-BCP plan site for that location.
It’s just one more example of how our customers benefit from the integration of the time tested Phoenix DRP-BCP planning solution within the SharePoint environment.
About KingsBridge
KingsBridge offers private businesses and government organizations a unique combination of industry knowledge and cost-effective disaster recovery / business continuity solutions. KingsBridge products and seminars provide the tools to assess possible threats and create tailored plans which mitigate risks and minimize losses in the event of a disruption to business. KingsBridge is headquartered in Ogdensburg, New York, with an office in Ottawa, Canada. For more information visit us at www.DisasterRecovery.com.
Filed under: KingsBridge Disaster Recovery | Tags: business continuity, Continuity of Operations, COOP, disaster, disaster preparation, disaster recovery, disaster recovery software, disruption, KingsBridge Disaster Recovery, Phoenix software
Each year as winter gets closer our customers start to think about winter weather and how it will impact their business (if you are one of the lucky ones in the south, pray for a warm winter and no snow!). We are asked the same thing every year “How can we protect our business better?”. While this is a valid question, there are lots of other factors to take into account. First and foremost what is a disaster? Second, How does it differ from a disruption?
Every self respecting Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning website shows varying levels of Armageddon with large-scale fires, earthquakes, hurricanes and the like. While those threats are all reasonable ones to plan for, don’t get hung up on trying to plan for something that isn’t “likely” to impact your business. A 2010 Gartner/Disaster Recovery Journal survey shows that 7 other threats are more likely (Power Failure, IT Hardware Failure, Network Failure, Winter Storm, Human Error, Flood, IT Software Failure) to impact your business. Notice anything about most of these? None of them start as disasters, they start as disruptions!
So when you are doing your planning, why are you planning for something that has a 6% likelihood (Fire in the same survey), when you should be planning for something with a 44% likelihood (Power Failure)? It would seem that we are blinded by “the big one” and don’t notice the real threats to our business.
What the big deal with disruptions turning into disasters? Each disruption could have been stopped at that point with a proper Recovery Plan, unfortunately they weren’t prepared and the disruption ruined your business. Don’t let a coffee being spilt into your exchange server ruin your business, have a plan that stops your disruption at a disruption before it turns into a disaster!
About KingsBridge
KingsBridge offers private businesses and government organizations a unique combination of industry knowledge and cost-effective disaster recovery / business continuity solutions. KingsBridge products and seminars provide the tools to assess possible threats and create tailored plans which mitigate risks and minimize losses in the event of a disruption to business. Kingsbridge is headquartered in Ogdensburg, New York, with an office in Ottawa, Canada. For more information visit us at www.DisasterRecovery.com.
Filed under: KingsBridge Disaster Recovery, Knowledge | Tags: business continuity, business continuity software, business disaster, Continuity of Operations, COOP, disaster preparation, disaster recovery, disaster recovery software, iPad, iPhone Application, KingsBridge Disaster Recovery, mobile browser, Phoenix Mobile iPhone App
With the recent explosion of mobile devices and their increased power, we are being asked about “accessing our BC/DR plan from a mobile device”. As more and more companies are taking their plans online/cloud based and their workforce is increasingly more mobile, having access to their plan on their device is becoming a reality. Where does this leave all these apps that we see everyday? Let’s take a look…
Jim Balsillie (co-CEO of BlackBerry) told a conference in November 2010 (only seven months ago) that “We believe that you can bring the mobile to the Web but you don’t need to go through some kind of control point of an SDK, and that’s the core part of our message.”. While that might work in concept, BlackBerry is being crushed under the Android and Apple onslaught of Apps. It really is simple, users don’t want to access information that is designed for a larger screen, crunched into a little 4 in screen. Alternatively, they don’t want a stripped down edition where they are shown limited information decided upon by the developer of the website. With more than 300,000 apps available for iPhones alone, I think the market has spoken.
What do you get with an App that accesses your plan instead of “just a browser”?
As there aren’t many Apps on the market for Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery, the options are limited. However, of those that are available they offer a completely different experience than viewing a website. They actually allow you to interact with your complete recovery plan. You have a single location to:
- send a notification
- acknowledge a notification
- send your location to your team members
- find directions to your hotsite
- read your plan without having to scroll through the entire plan.
Each of these tasks (or actions) are built to look and function perfectly for your device (iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry or Android). It becomes an extension of your plan instead of fighting with your plan. As you have probably already found out, if you make the process difficult, the users simply won’t use it!
To recap, what we have learned… Regardless of whatever anyone tells you, reading your plan on a mobile device through a browser is not “Mobile Enabled”. To truly be able to access your plan, you need to have an extension of your plan in your hand 24/7/365. If you don’t believe ask anyone to access Facebook through their mobile browser and not the App that has been built to make the process easier, faster and better. If your social life deserves an app… Shouldn’t your business?
About KingsBridge
KingsBridge offers private businesses and government organizations a unique combination of industry knowledge and cost-effective disaster recovery / business continuity solutions. KingsBridge products and seminars provide the tools to assess possible threats and create tailored plans which mitigate risks and minimize losses in the event of a disruption to business. Kingsbridge is headquartered in Ogdensburg, New York, with an office in Ottawa, Canada. For more information visit us at www.DisasterRecovery.com.
Filed under: KingsBridge Disaster Recovery | Tags: business continuity, business continuity software, business disaster, business impact analysis, Continuity of Operations, COOP, disaster recovery, disaster recovery software, iPhone Application, KingsBridge Disaster Recovery, Phoenix Mobile, Phoenix Mobile iPhone App, Phoenix software
We’re seeing a unique disaster this year in both the U.S. and Canada. In both countries, there is unprecedented flooding from heavy winter snows and rains. In both cases, flood gates are being opened to flood some areas to protect other.
In Louisiana, Army engineers opened a spillway to allow the swollen Mississippi River to flood thousands of homes and fields but save New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
One of the 125 floodgates at the Morganza Spillway northwest of Baton Rouge was opened on Saturday which dumped water onto nearby fields. This is intended to save Louisiana’s two largest cities.
There are already 3 million acres of farmland flooded in Mississippi, Tennessee and Arkansas.
It is expected that 3,000 square miles of land could be inundated in up to 20 feet of water for several weeks and it will take up to three weeks for the water to pass through a system of levees and spillways to the Gulf of Mexico.
The irony is that there is a drought in the area and still, they won’t be able to benefit from the flood waters.
If they didn’t open the spillway, then New Orleans would be at risk of flooding worse than seen during Hurricane Katrina, when 80 percent of the city was flooded and 1,500 people died.
In Canada, they are having similar difficulties in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Quebec. They have opened a dike in Manitoba to divert water from swollen rivers unto farms and towns. They have filled tens of thousands of sandbags to minimize damage to homes in the path of the water. The idea is to sacrifice some homes to save many more. In Quebec, the Richelieu River has flooded scores of homes as well.
So what does all of this mean in the continuity business ? Well, government officials in all of these cases have been faced with difficult decisions to choose between homes, farms, businesses, power plants, oil refineries in some areas and those in more populous areas. Even with the best of intentions, some are going to lose.
The variety of disasters that can affect your business continue to increase. You must continue to re-visit your plans to ensure that they remain current and that your team members are still trained to the new standards.
About KingsBridge
KingsBridge offers private businesses and government organizations a unique combination of industry knowledge and cost-effective disaster recovery / business continuity solutions. KingsBridge products and seminars provide the tools to assess possible threats and create tailored plans which mitigate risks and minimize losses in the event of a disruption to business. Kingsbridge is headquartered in Ogdensburg, New York, with offices in Ottawa, Canada and Burlington, Vermont. For more information visit us at www.DisasterRecovery.com.
Filed under: KingsBridge Disaster Recovery
A question sometimes arises whether or not scenarios should be a part of your plan.
Scenarios are used in the training and testing of the team members. Just as ambulance drivers, firemen, and policemen are not taught exactly how to respond in every emergency situation but rather are trained so that they have the skills and the knowledge to be able to apply those to any situation that they may encounter. You want your team members to have that same kind of skill and knowledge. You want them to know instinctively from your training how to respond to any disaster that they might encounter.
If you have a cookbook solution then, by default, the team members will never take the time to get trained. And then when disaster happens, they will then have to read the cookbook. And we know that that will not be a satisfactory response.
The best place to put scenarios is in the SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) and then cover them in your training.
About KingsBridge
KingsBridge offers private businesses and government organizations a unique combination of industry knowledge and cost-effective disaster recovery / business continuity solutions. KingsBridge products and seminars provide the tools to assess possible threats and create tailored plans which mitigate risks and minimize losses in the event of a disruption to business. Kingsbridge is headquartered in Ogdensburg, New York, with offices in Ottawa, Canada and Burlington, Vermont. For more information visit us at www.DisasterRecovery.com.
