Transcript RIMS Receiving & Inspection
Business Continuity/Preparedness Planning – What’s Important
Allen Patrick, CBCP
Greater Tampa Bay - Association of Contingency Planners
October 27, 2010
Overview – Planning Elements
1. Lay out a program plan… a vision 2. Management Support 3. Risk Analysis 4. Incident Response Planning 5. Recovery Planning 6. Training & Awareness 7. Exercises 8. Maintenance 9. Supplemental Info… resource links & suggestions
Maturity Level…
Avoid the temptation to try and jump to highest level of maturity or detail: – Build a foundation and leverage any foundation you might already – – have; Build a vision of where you want the program to go; Layout a plan on how to get there.
From: Business Continuity Maturity Model © Copyright Virtual Corp. 2004-2005
Continuity and Preparedness
Basic Definition: A business preparedness and continuity program aims to prevent or mitigate, respond effectively to, and recover from the effects of business disrupting events.
Emphasize personnel safety!
Management Support
Key Points: – Secure support from the top level manager/executive … Ask what keeps them awake at night; – Obtain an executive level manager as a sponsor/champion and lead for a steering committee; – – Establish a budget and planning team; Arrange for an announcement to the organization endorsing the program, sumarizing your role, and explaining the organization’s involvement expectations – both budget and participation.
Even with upper management’s endorsement, respect people’s time and their need to balance continuity/preparedness planning priorities with their primary business priorities!
Management Key Plan Components…
If you have nothing else, before you get started…, – Establish a management level incident support team and a way for its members to communicate. (Else, make sure the existing one is current.) – Establish an incident response team and a basic incident response plan… just in case something happens tomorrow! Keep it simple but effective…plenty to cobble from on the internet.
Communication
Communication is the most critical component of an effective business continuity/ preparedness plan. Even the best response and recovery plans are crippled without and any plan’s weaknesses and exceptional circumstances can be managed more effectively with reliable, effective communications. Assuring communications, therefore, is the absolute first planning priority when developing business continuity plans.
Pragmatic approach…
Apply “practical due diligence” when establishing a business continuity program. Initially, program needs to focus on the key planning elements: 1) Reliable Communication 2) Preparedness, Response, and Recovery Teams 3) Team Tasks and Responsibility Lists (Recommend plan templates for consistency and clarity. Adapt plans to size or complexity of the organization.)
Pragmatic approach…
Apply “practical due diligence” when maturing a business continuity program: 1) Prioritize and implement projects in phases based upon the best use of time and money; defer capabilities of marginal use… Lay out a maturity roadmap; 2) Program should be scalable. Processes should be scalable; 3) Operational structure and tools should conform to day-to-day business model as much as possible.
Risk Assessment – Threat & Vulnerability Assmt.
– Threat and Vulnerability Assessment • Keep it simple; • Develop a strawman assessment; • Engage stake holders such as: Facilities, Security, HR, IT, Finance, Supply Chain, core business managers, etc. to build on the strawman; • Target at a Site/Facility-level (or sites/facilities if in the same geographical area and similar in operation) if possible; Process level if necessary; • For mitigation leverage basic prevention, early warning, and mitigation infrastructure, e.g. fire suppression, security, fire alarms, evacuation plans, data backups, backup power, etc.
Risk Assessment
– – Threat and Vulnerability Assessment • Keep it simple • Site/Facility-level (or sites/facilities if in the same geographical area and similar in operation) if possible Business Impact Analysis • Key info: What are the critical business processes and what is their recovery order • What are the critical operational and infrastructure processes that need to be recovered in order to recover the critical business processes… and what is their recovery order
www.emsa.ca.gov/disaster/files/kaiser_model.xls
Above added as Comments in each Risk cell. Event label entered in comment to clarify relationship of comment to the risk to which it applies.
Risk Assmt: Business Impact Analysis (BIA)- Before you start… Understand how the results of the BIA are going to be used and make sure each question relates to that purpose. • • • Primary objective: What are the critical core business processes; Secondary: (RTO & RPO) Return Time Objective & Return Point Objective; Tertiary: Core business process dependencies (Optionally, these can be identified in the recovery planning process.)
Risk Assmt: Business Impact Analysis (BIA)- Before you start… Last thing you want to hear from management after you present the results is: “OK, now tell us something we didn’t already know.” Lesson learned – Find out what management doesn’t know up front. If they already know what it is you need to know… get it from them before putting the organization through the BIA process.
Risk Assessment – Business Impact Analysis
Business Impact Analysis (BIA) – Primary objective: What are the critical core business processes and what is their recovery priority; – What are the critical operational processes and infrastructure that need to be recovered in order to recover the critical business processes… and what is their recovery order.
Examples: – A headquarters operation looking at several geographically separate sites with different core business processes may want to look at a high level BIA, by function, and across the entire enterprise or region.
– Regional operations with more than one local site may want to prioritize and know in advance which operations receive first priority for recovery resources among those regional sites.
– Single site needs to know core business recovery priorities and their dependencies.
Response Plan
Based upon the Threat and Vulnerability Assessment, supplemented with regulatory requirements, establish an Incident Response/Emergency Plan – Establish an Incident Response/Management Team (IRT); – Address the top level threats and regulatory requirements; – Include contact information for the IRT and key outside support organizations, e.g. law enforcement, fire & rescue, response & restoration suppliers, etc.; – Include key infrastructure maps, e.g. water valves, electrical panels, gas shut-offs, HAZMAT & other emergency supplies, etc.; – Provide employee-level response guidance, e.g. incident reporting, alarm activation, evacuation, employee accounting, etc.; – Make the plan available at appropriate level to audience…
Full Incident Response/Emergency Plan
Key entry points, guard stations (grab & go bags), top level exec, incident commanders
Samples: Campus or building flip charts and employee hang tags or wallet cards
Recovery Plan
Develop Recovery Plan(s)… could be one plan or multiple plans, depending upon organization’s complexity. (Multiple = Scalable) – The difference and transition between response process and recovery process needs to be clear… Damage assessment transition; – Need to have a management level incident support team that establishes (guided by the critical core business process recovery priorities) priorities; arranges supplemental resources, communicates to corporate management, shareholders, customers, media, etc.
Recovery Plan
Develop a strategy for each critical business and operational process… – Strategy could include more than one option… like a football playbook… use the recovery option appropriate to the situation; – Continuance doesn’t necessarily mean resuming in the same or a centralized alternate facility… For large enterprises could mean deferring to personnel performing the same function at another location; Temporarily outsourcing; Individuals working remotely with notebook computers & cell phones; etc. - TEST – As appropriate arrange in advance for alternate locations; data and system restoration of service, backup equipment & cross-trained staff, records, reciprocal agreements, etc.
Recovery Plan
Plan components… – Recovery team(s) with a team lead(s) and alternates – Engagement process and communication methods – Meeting location w/alternates – team operation center – – Alternate operations options Recovery responsibility & task lists – Dependencies – Identify and plan alternatives • Critical skills/personnel • Critical equipment and assets • • Critical processes IT applications, data, and records - backup & recovery • Critical suppliers • Operational supplies
Recovery Plan
Plan components (continued)… – – – Damage assessment process External Communications: Management, customers, & suppliers External department responsibilities summary list
Awareness and Training…
Establish an awareness program for all levels, e.g. Execs, Planners and various teams’ members, employees… even suppliers
Awareness and Training…
Key Points: – Employees as a whole, e.g. Newsletter announcements, emails, and articles, posters, wallet cards & hang tags, workshops, on-line training, family preparedness (http://www.ready.gov), etc.
– Individual teams, e.g. walk-through exercises, team reviews, function level incident exercises, rotate planning maintenance role, etc.
– Community responders, e.g. periodic meetings, facility walk-throughs, participation in awareness week-type activities, etc.
– Suppliers/vendors, e.g. periodic supplier certification process that includes preparedness; include suppliers in exercises – Senior and Corporate Management; e.g. include in activation exercises; Have serve on steering committee, Management tag-ups, etc.
Program Exercises and Maintenance
Keep teams and plans current: – Perform planned exercises and perform “what ifs” after actual events perform after action reviews – assign actions and track to closure; – Use non-incident specific plan walk-through process to assure plans are current and relevant – assign actions and track to closure; – – Planners should be alert for changes that could affect plans; Set periodic review and exercise goals & send reminders and track goal achievements to closure; – – Track exercises, drills, awareness events, etc.
Track program component completion progress
Program Exercises and Maintenance
Refresh Management Support…
Back to Step one
B. Allen Patrick, CBCP, CDIA Manager, Admin & Mail Services 727.302.4244
[email protected]
Supplemental info…
Resources…
Flip chart model: http://police.wvu.edu/emergency_flip_chart Business Continuity Maturity Model – Virtual Corp’s free open access maturity and sustainability tool… http://virtual-corp.net/html/bcmm.html
Leadership and the importance of communication in the midst of crisis interview with Rich Irwin, former Senior Special Operations Program Officer in the CIA: http://www.bulletproofblog.com/2010/10/21/bulletproof interview-special-%E2%80%93-richard-irwin-on-effective crisis-management-and-preparedness/
Resources…
Threat (Hazard) & Vulnerability template (Consider listing all threats in one worksheet to facilitate criticality rank comparisons.) www.emsa.ca.gov/disaster/files/kaiser_model.xls
SafetyInfo.com - Response/Emergency Planning 4 STEPS IN THE PLANNING PROCESS - For Details See: http://www.safetyinfo.com/guests/Emergency%20Planning %20-%204%20Step%20Planning.htm