Business Continuity Unit

BUSINESS CONTINUITY TOOLKIT

4. BUSINESS CONTINUITY STRATEGIES

EXAMPLES

PART 1 - STRATEGIES

The following strategies may have already been decided centrally and therefore may not be a decision that your team will need to take. However, they are included here for information.

Diverse sites / The undertaking of activities at two or more geographically diverse sites so that operations can be switched from one to another. Both sites are live.
This has potential to provide high resilience (depending on the threat) but can be very costly (unless the sites already exist).
This will not protect against incidents that cannot be locally contained (eg pandemic/computer virus)
Each site needs to be able to carry some/all of the load of the other site.
Replication/standby facilities / This involves replicating your capability to undertake all activities at another site. This site is not live. It is activated in an incident and staff are moved to this replica site.
This may be suitable if it is acceptable for your activity to stop for a few hours.
This relies on staff being able and willing to move to the replica site.
Subcontracting work / Contracting a third party to perform an activity (or set of activities) for you is a possible strategy. If your activity needs to continue within a day then any subcontracting arrangements will need to be set up in advance.
Post-incident acquisition / This may be possible if the resources you require are not specialist and may be easily available to purchase in the event of an incident.
This may also be a suitable strategy if it is acceptable for your activity to be disrupted for a relatively long period of time.
Insurance / It is possible to insure against some losses, however, this will not protect you against any loss of reputation
Do nothing / This may be a suitable strategy if the Executive Board have understood and owned the risk of having no strategy in place or if it is acceptable for the activity to be stopped for a long period of time.

PART 2 - TACTICS

Possible areas for consideration are:

·  Storing information offsite

·  Holding older equipment as spares

·  Identifying alternative suppliers

·  Multi-skill training of individuals

·  Succession planning

·  Servers stored in two different locations

·  Ensuring appropriate equipment is on Uninterruptible Power Supply

·  A back up office to work from in the event that your normal work area is not available

·  Arrangements to work from home/remote access etc

·  Resilient telecommunications

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