Continuity of Operations Planning and What Have We Learned? Mountain Home AR

Posted by : Thomas Di Santi

In the late 1990s we prepared for Y2K. Then the tragedies of 9/11 forced us to redefine disaster and reassess corporate disaster recovery and continuity of operations plans. Then the large-scale blackouts of 2003 caught most businesses unprepared once again. So, what have we learned?

Every organization, large and small needs a continuity of operations plan (COOP). It's a seemingly obvious lesson but it's still worth stating. A surprising number of organizations both large and small have no plan in place or limited, incomplete, and or untested plans. If your organization has no plan, start with a simple assessment and evaluate a scenario in which you lose access to your facility indefinitely. Does this put you out of business? If it does and you don't have a continuity of operations plan in place then get started on one immediately.

"Possible" is a moving target ñ reassess your scenarios
Again, with record power outages this year spread across two continents and broad geographic areas, our definition of what is possible has been expanded. Organizations need to realistically factor in the ever-changing definition of 'possible' into their COOP planning scenarios.

COOPs do not necessarily have to be grandiose or expensive. Larger businesses typically require more formal planning and preparation, but smaller organizations might only need to take regular backups of critical systems, store the data offsite, and gi...

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