What to do AFTER "it" happens?

Dear BC/DR Planning Colleague:

With the worldwide threat of natural, biological and man-made disaster incidents hanging over our heads, some companies tend to put an extraordinary amount of effort in determining what can be done to decrease the risk of them occurring or prevent them. However, how many times have we heard people say, "everything happens for a reason" or the many other proverbs that relate to "if it's going to happen, it will happen."

In many instances, much time and money is spent on researching what can possibly go wrong, but it makes sense to use planning energies to prepare for recovery after those bad things happen. For example, incidents like a pandemic, health crisis and biological/chemical warfare will cause workforce reduction. With an opposite result, incidents like fires, hurricanes and earthquakes will cause inaccessibility to your facility or inoperability of your technology.

The question for continuity planners is: What to do AFTER "it" happens?

Most planners agree that the first step should be to identify and assess risks/threats. It is common sense to believe that no one can eliminate all the risks that can cause a disaster, e.g., power outages, natural disasters, pandemics, etc. If these are unpreventable, why spend lots of time analyzing them, including their probabilities, consequences, mitigation strategies and resulting implementation costs, etc.?

Our Recommendation: Don't over emphasis risk/threat assessment planning. We believe that there is tremendous value in incident-based plans, such as foul weather, fire, product recall, pandemic, etc. However, every organization should have a plan to recover and reestablish operations from the result of incidents.

If you'd like assistance on any related business continuity management, don't hesitate to contact our BCM practice consulting leader Tom Abruzzo at 1-800-252-4080 or tabruzzo@tampsystems.com