O'Shaughnessy Asset Management
Top Tips
For DR and BCP
- If your BCP plan includes critical staff working from home consider that in the event of power outage most residential internet carriers battery/UPS only lasts for 2 hours
- Insist on redundancy for power, internet and voice
- Ensure you have emergency office space to convene and collaborate with your team ensuring your continued operation
- Consider a geographical location that is far enough away yet easily accessible
- Plan your transportation and logistics for equipment and staff
- Document your technology and business processes and staff roles
- Determine whether your DR partner owns their center and are in full control of service quality
- Consider the effects of down time. How long can you close operations without incurring loss?
- Select a partner that will assist with documentation and frequent program testing
RFA Safe Harbor
Business Continuity Planning (BCP) &
Disaster Recovery (DR)
No matter how sophisticated your equipment, how smart you're investing skills, events can occur beyond your control rendering your operation unusable. RFA offers affordable solutions to keep your business afloat. Our Safe Harbor is located in Purchase, NY and is ready to get you up and running. Our owned and operated, fully equipped, business continuity facility can be your 'Safe Harbor' when disaster strikes.
Our experience tells us that there are many interpretations of what DR and BCP actually entail. Let us dispel the myths for you.
DEFINITIONS
Redundancy - Resilience built into a single system that keeps it running when one of its components fail, i.e., dual hard drives that mirror each other, dual power supplies that plug into two different sources of building power, error correcting memory that limits the amount of system crashes due to memory issues.
Back Up - Copying of data from the hard drive of a computer system to a backup device. This allows data to be restored due to a system error (hard drive crash) or a human error (file is deleted).
Business Continuity Planning (BCP) - Processes and procedures that are in place to keep a business running when the primary work location or the primary technology is no longer available. This is the decision making tree that allows companies to function despite loss of work space or technology. The plan consists of detailed instructions regarding what to do in a crisis.
Disaster Recovery (DR) - Works alongside the business continuity plans. This is the physical off site alternative office and technology platform or 'Hot Site' used when the primary operation site is no longer available.
What kind of crisis should I prepare for?
We hope that a catastrophic event will not impact your business. The reality is that large scale scenarios are generally not what we are preparing for. The most common instance for use of these programs is simple things like server or network equipment failure.
Ranking scenarios monitored on our Network Operations Center (NOC), here are the most common occurrences and their frequency.
Daily - Equipment failure, localized power or data interruptions,
Weekly -building access denial due to mechanical electrical failure of infrastructure
Occasionally - Extreme weather preventing travel to work, Building fire evacuation, water leak, gas pipe leak, water main breaks, city wide public services interruptions
Rarely - Natural Disasters, widespread power outages, chemical spills, construction accidents, acts of terrorism
