Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery Planning and Analysis

Services
In the event that a disaster occurs, our preventative, active business continuity planning will get your organization back up and running quickly with as little disruption to your critical business processes as possible. Unforeseen problems can range from major natural disasters to network outages, and anticipation of these possible and probable issues is imperative to the continuation of your business processes. Good planning and analysis will ensure that the likelihood and impact of these incidents are minimized.

Cirdan Group’s business continuity planning takes into consideration the fact that planning for every plausible disaster is not only a financial impossibility, but it is also not a feasible business practice. We will help you determine what the likely risks are to your organization to make sure that your disaster recovery budget allocation is used wisely and efficiently. We will assist you in making pragmatic decisions about critical systems and knowledgeably triaging recovery work. We will also help you interpret and apply any applicable standards for your organization.

Approach
Cirdan Group follows the National Institute of Standards (NIST) standard for disaster recovery planning activities to ensure that our clients’ disaster recovery activities cover all critical areas. We begin business continuity planning by identifying, evaluating, and prioritizing your critical business processes. We conduct a formal Risk Analysis and Business Impact Analysis for those critical processes. Using that information, we work with your personnel to establish recovery resource requirements and strategies.

Our delivery includes a complete Business Continuity Plan with roles and responsibilities, business processes critical to recovery, prioritization of those processes, backup restoration and procedures, employee and service provider contact information, specific steps for recovery, and a detailed testing plan. Finally, we make sure that your organization is equipped with a productive distribution plan that ensures the proper personnel have access to the Business Continuity Plan if and when necessary.

By identifying preventative strategies, we help you mitigate disasters before they happen. This mitigation may include removing potentially risky activities from your business plan or moving technology center backup locations within your organization. These mitigation activities have the potential to save your organization significant financial resources in the case of an emergency. Even more important, an effective Business Continuity Plan reassures your customers and clients that their needs will be met even in a disaster.

For other clients we have conducted reviews of existing disaster recovery plans, disaster recovery policies and standards, and provided compliance and gap analysis and recommendations for improvement to future plan versions.

Projects
State of Maryland, State Highway Administration, Disaster Recovery Planning COOP Assessment, Recovery Plan Development, and Plan Updates, 2006-2008

Destinations Credit Union, Compliance Review of Existing Disaster Recovery Plan to National Credit Union Disaster Recovery Audit Standards, 2007

State of Maryland, Department of Budget and Management, Disaster Recovery Readiness Assessment, 2006