Business Continuity Series, pt 1 - Overview

Business continuity was an extremely hot topic during 9/11 as well as with current worries about avian and swine flu. The question posed is this: "How resilient are your business process to disruptions"? Whether that be a building fire, a crashed server or the loss of key personnel due to illness, companies need to know the inter-dependency of related systems as well as the redundancies (or lack thereof).

The next series will look at the math and mechanics of business resiliency planning

• Part 1. Overview (This post)
• Part 2. Parallel versus Serial Failure and Resiliency
• Part 3. Service metrics - What are your goals?
  
• Part 4. Building a BCP Plan
• Part 5. Implementing the Plan

What is important is to differentiate between fear mongering and understanding real business risks associated with the operating environment and taking appropriate steps to mitigate them efficiently and effectively.

The material that will be covered in this series is a combination of engineering statistics principles coupled with business continuity planning as described by the Disaster Recovery Institute (DRI) as part of the Associate and Certified Business Continuity Professional level certifications (ABCP and CBCP respectively).