It is now generally recognized that Business continuity planning and disaster recovery planning are vital activities. However, the creation of (and maintenance of) a sound business continuity and disaster recovery plan, is a complex undertaking, involving a series of steps.

Prior to creation of the plan itself, it is essential to consider the potential impacts of disaster and to understand the underlying risks: these are the foundations upon which a sound business continuity plan or disaster recovery plan should be built. Following these activities the plan itself must be constructed - no small task. This itself must then be maintained, tested and audited to ensure that it remains appropriate to the needs of the organization. And what about the support infrastructure and services?

Our Business Continuity Planing & Disaster Recovery is designed to consider all these issues and to catalog some of the most highly acclaimed products and services. Here you will find software to assist with BIA and risk analysis, as well as links to tools/services to help you create, maintain and audit the plan itself. Whether you are entirely new to business continuity and disaster recovery planning, or whether you already have a proven and established plan, the directory should hopefully prove to be of real value.

-Busines impact & Risk Analisys

The first step in a sensible business continuity process is to consider the potential impacts of each type of disaster or event. This is critical - how can you properly plan for a disaster if you have little idea of the likely impacts on your business/organization of the different scenarios? Having determined the impacts, it is now equally important to consider the magnitude of the risks which could result in these impacts. Again, this is a critical activity - it will determine which scenarios are most likely to occur and which should attract most attention during the planning process. BIA and Risk analysis are disciplines in their own right. However, a method has emerged to simplify these tasks. The COBRA methodology and tool are now used across the world, by all types of organization.

-Creating a Disaster Recovery Plan

A sound disaster recovery / business continuity plan is essential to protect the well being of an organization. This cannot really be over emphasized... yet many enterprises still side step the issue or hold plans which are clearly out of date or inadequate. Part of the reason for this is the complexity of the task. This is not helped by some vendors selling planning products which are themselves extremely difficult to master. There is now, however, a growing trend to address this head on: to use a quality disaster recovery template with forms and guide to create the plan directly. Minimum fuss, minumum complexity, maximum productivity... and a top quality plan at the end.