Technology

EMERGENCY AND BUSINESS CONTINUANCE PLANS

emergency Disasters can take many forms. While natural disasters such as floods, hurricanes and earthquakes are rare events, the most common causes of stoppage of business or of data systems can occur at any time: fire, power failure, computer viruses, equipment breakdown, malicious acts – including those by discontented employees, etc.

The main requirement is to resume operations as soon as possible, thus minimising the impact of the disaster; but this is only possible if the company has prepared and trained for this. It is not a matter of having a pile of procedures on paper in "some corner of the company" but of having an operational emergency system, which evolves as the company develops. The only guarantors of this kind of effectiveness are tests under real conditions to confirm that an emergency and business continuance plan operates correctly.

Many organisations and companies are not well prepared for such disasters. Recent research shows that the main barriers to such preparations are lack of support from General Management and funding considerations. The computer infrastructure is certainly not the only element to take into account when drawing up an emergency and business continuance plan but, considering the strategic and sensitive nature of these data, it is up to us to propose solutions to ensure their survival.

All the options must be considered, from "simple" procedures for backing up and recovering lost, deleted or corrupted files to restoration of the complete infrastructure in a secondary site, and handles in such a way as to provide the adequate resources necessary to achieve this. Ideally, this concept forms part of a global operating framework incorporating all the company's operating processes.

Using its technical expertise and knowledge of these types of procedures, SYSELCOM works with you to in realising these tasks, including analysing and taking into account the following elements:

Data processing and professional and industrial application processes.
Hardware and software system components, secure components - (Computer room) – both own property and rented. Technical staff.
Composantes immobilières et locatives sécurisées (Computer Room).
Interconnection infrastructures (LAN & WAN).
Users' equipment and workplaces. Alert procedures.
Data restoration and system rebooting procedures.
Testing and validation procedures.