Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Infrastructure
DR/BC Process Infrastructure
Management Overview of the processes associated with the DR/BC plan
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Preparation
The Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity support team, as soon as a DR/BC event is declared, should have at least one individual go to the DR/BC management room and ensure that it is ready. This could include:
- Have several copies, of the DR/BC plan accessible - either electronic or physical printed copy;
- Bringing along an DR/BC team battle box containing all the required documents, stationery, log sheets and equipment;
- Setting up the room;
- Setting out role cards in a set order;
- Preparing incident boards;
- Setting up and/or testing telephones and laptops if they are being used; and
- Setting up and testing the WiFi and internet connectivity.
During the event
During the event a team member can do the following tasks:
- Record who attended each meeting;
- Record action points from each meeting. At the end of each meeting read back the action points to the team to check that they are correct. Once the meeting has finished they should be written up on a board or flipchart and posted to the cloud. As members of the DR/BC team carry out the actions they should tick them off. This allows the team leader to instantly see which tasks have been done and then in the next team meeting they can focus on the tasks which have not been done;
- If key decisions are made during the meeting they may be asked to record them;
- Record key events;
- The team leader may also ask them to record identified issues, risks and decisions, and when the decisions need to be made by;
- During the meeting, a member of the DR/BC team may be designated to answer the team’s mobile phones so that they are not disturbed;
- Act as a gate keeper to prevent ‘incident tourists’ from disturbing the DR/BC process.
In between meetings the following roles may be undertaken:
- Answer the DR/BC management room phone and log any incoming calls;
- Provide the team with refreshments and the obligatory DR/BC management room pizzas;
- Keep the room clean and tidy.
- Photocopy and distribute paperwork;
- Find out information for the team, get hold of people and conduct research;
- Update incident boards and make sure that there is a chronological list of incident events.
Post event
At the end of an incident preservation of event history is critical. This role really needs to be supervised by the business continuity manager and the following should be carried out:
- Carry out any post incident procedures;
- Collate all documents used during the incident. These could be electronic ones as well as physical ones;
- Ensure that all emails relevant to the incident are collated in one place;
- Ensure that all information on smart phones is recorded. This could include texts, WhatsApp messages, telephone logs and information from any notification system;
- Make sure that all the information is saved in one place. Legal advice should be taken on where is the best place to store these and how long they should be kept;
- They may also want to save all documents, templates and text created during the incident in one place and ensure they are available to the team so that they can be adapted for future events.
