To survive in today’s threat environment, enterprises of all sizes must understand the costs of business interruption, plan to deal with the unexpected, protect life and safety, and—for those most critical business processes—maintain continuous operations under any circumstances.
However, planning and implementing a business continuity plan imposes organizational costs in terms of money, time, and effort. Like any other business activity, the benefits must outweigh those costs, and the benefits must be tied to business requirements.
So how do you spare the resources to work on something that is so critical, yet which doesn’t drive revenue or contribute to your core business?
Don’t Spend More Than You Need To
CIBER can help you develop and implement business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) plans which support your organization’s most critical processes without straining your resources.
We understand your enterprise is unique. No other organization has the same mission, business processes, stakeholders / customers, vendors, and legal / regulatory environment. For that reason, “cookie cutter” business continuity solutions may not be the best approach for your organization.
CIBER assists enterprises like yours in developing business continuity programs tailored to your unique requirements, whether those encompass products, services, stakeholders, interruption costs, risk environments, policies, statutory requirements, geographical locations, or distribution sites. Our customized solutions provide a sharp business process focus to yield maximum benefit from your business continuity investments.
CIBER offers a full range of business continuity management elements, including planning and implementation of:
- Complete business continuity management programs
- Disaster recovery and reconstitution of processes and resources
- Crisis and emergency management operations
- Business continuity / continuity of operations / continuity of government
What’s the Difference Between Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery?
Business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) are frequently confused. Business continuity is characterized by the following:
- It begins before the disruption / incident
- It is continuous
- It is focused on business processes
In contrast, disaster recovery is characterized by the following:
- It begins at the time of the disruption / incident
- It ends at the resumption of normal operations
- It is focused on resources
CIBER offers services for both BC and DR. Services include the following:
- Business impact and risk analysis
- Strategy development
- Executable plan development
- Integration with existing business continuity, disaster recovery, and emergency response plans
- Development and delivery of education and awareness programs
- Exercise and test coordination and evaluation Already Have a Business Continuity Program?
If you already have a business continuity program, we can increase the value of that program by helping you:
- Keep the plan simple and executable. A plan is worthless if it can't be understood and executed. CIBER helps you train your team and test your plan.
- Focus on business. CIBER helps ensure that every business continuity activity and expenditure supports your business goals and objectives.
- Involve senior management and stakeholders. CIBER business continuity consultants are senior level professionals who understand business requirements and can help articulate a BC business case to executives.
CIBER’s Three-Phased Approach to Business Continuity
CIBER approaches business continuity in three phases:
- Understanding Phase: CIBER collects considerable information about business processes, resources, and personnel. Through formal Business Impact Analysis (BIA) and risk analysis, CIBER works with you to determine the impacts of business process disruption. We help you prioritize critical business processes and the risks affecting those processes. Because the BIA defines requirements for all types of operational risk management, it is also very useful as the foundation of security and emergency management programs.
- Planning Phase: CIBER develops business continuity strategies, the Business Continuity Plan, and department-level disaster recovery plans. The strategies take recovery goals and objectives into account, as well as constraints and dependencies. A business continuity plan is a comprehensive, executable plan which will help you make decisions, and either protect or recover your critical business processes before the impacts of disruption degrade your ability to serve your stakeholders. A disaster recovery plan details specific processes to recover critical business processes if those processes have been interrupted.
- Implementation Phase: CIBER develops and delivers education and awareness programs, helps you exercise your plan to ensure it meets your needs, and helps you make business continuity a part of your organizational culture.
CIBER Helps You Expect the Unexpected
CIBER has helped numerous organizations prepare for unexpected events. For a few cases in point, see the following examples. We can help you, too.
County
A county government needed to know how to recover the services to its citizens in the event of a disaster, and continue providing those services in a prioritized sequence as soon as possible. CIBER provided the county with a disaster recovery strategy and a business continuity plan.
Specifically, CIBER identified the following:
- Risks and threats to resources for county information services
- Requirements for recovering county applications, systems, and networks (supporting the associated services)
- Strategies for meeting those requirements
- High level costs of such strategies
- County department succession lists and key activities for departmental business continuity
- Structures and processes to help the Information Services department to respond to incidents which compromise information services resources
The county now has an executable strategy in place, and continues to provide its citizens with the essential services before, during, and after a disaster.
City Technology Agency
The technology agency of a major U.S. city—tasked with supporting the information and communications requirements of more than 30 city agencies (including police, fire, and other emergency services)—asked CIBER to determine its business continuity requirements and the risks to its critical infrastructure. CIBER provided the agency with a Business Impact Analysis and Risk Analysis.
CIBER determined the following:
- All of the business processes supported by the technology agency
- The impacts to citizens and other stakeholders of disruptions to those business processes
- The maximum time the City could stand to be without each business process
- The technology agency resources required to support each business process
- The risks to each of those resources
The city technology agency now has a comprehensive understanding of its requirements before, during, and after a disaster. Based on that information, the agency has asked CIBER to develop a business continuity plan to enable it to meet those requirements.
Major Medical Facility
The laboratory services division of a major medical facility in the upper-Midwest provides life-critical analytical services to hospitals and clinics nationwide. The division asked CIBER to conduct a Business Impact Analysis and develop a roadmap for ongoing business continuity efforts.
CIBER did the following:
- Identified the business processes critical to the facility and its clients
- Characterized the life-critical and other impacts that would result from disruption of each process
- Categorized and prioritized the critical resources (e.g., personnel, facilities, technology, etc.) supporting each process
- Developed a strategic roadmap for strengthening the facility’s business continuity stance and for reducing risks to the life and health of patients nationwide
Coastal City Government
The office of technology of a major coastal US city, facing significant threat from hurricanes and other sources, tasked CIBER with determining its continuity and recovery requirements through a formal business impact analysis (BIA).
After the BIA, the city asked CIBER to develop a disaster recovery plan for the city’s information technology (IT) department to help optimize the availability of critical government services.
CIBER did the following:
- Helped the city to determine and prioritize the critical business processes supported by IT
- Developed the city’s first comprehensive IT disaster recovery plan
- Defined a hot-site recovery strategy to greatly reduce recovery time
- Facilitated training and conducted an exercise of the plan with supporting staff
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery P... (936KB)
