Business Continuity Strategy

Developing business continuity strategies is a critical responsibility for the CIO. If you’ve wondered by reading through the articles whether the CIO ever sleeps, the answer is no.

Identify critical IT systems and infrastructure

The first step in developing business continuity strategies is to identify the critical IT systems and infrastructure that are essential to maintaining or restoring business operations in the event of a disruption. This may include identifying critical applications, servers, databases, and network infrastructure.

1. Conduct a business impact analysis (BIA): This involves assessing the potential impact of a disruption on the organization’s operations and identifying the critical business processes that are necessary to maintain business continuity. The BIA should identify the systems and infrastructure that support these critical processes.
2. Evaluate?dependencies: Once the critical business processes have been identified, the CIO should evaluate the dependencies between the processes and the IT systems and infrastructure that support them. This will help to identify the specific systems and infrastructure that are critical to maintaining or restoring business operations.
3. Review IT service catalogs: The CIO should also review the organization’s IT service catalogs to identify the systems and infrastructure that support critical services. This may include reviewing service-level agreements (SLAs) and service dependencies to determine which systems and infrastructure are most critical to business operations.
4. Consult with?stakeholders: The CIO should consult with stakeholders from across the organization to identify any additional critical systems or infrastructure that may not have been identified through the BIA or service catalog review. This may include consulting with business unit leaders, IT staff, and other key stakeholders to identify systems and infrastructure that are essential to business operations.

Assess risks

The next step is to assess the risks associated with each critical IT system and infrastructure. This may involve conducting a risk assessment that considers the likelihood of different types of disruptions, such as natural disasters, cyber-attacks, or human errors, and the potential impact of those disruptions on the organization’s operations.

• The first step in conducting a risk assessment is to identify the IT assets that need to be assessed. This may include hardware, software, data, and networks.
• Once the assets have been identified, the CIO should identify the potential threats that could impact those assets. This may include natural disasters, cyber attacks, human error, and system failures.
• The CIO should then evaluate the vulnerabilities of each asset to the identified threats. This involves assessing the potential impact of each threat on each asset and identifying any weaknesses in the security controls that are in place to protect those assets.
• The CIO should then determine the likelihood of each threat occurring and the likelihood of each asset being impacted by those threats. This may involve analyzing historical data, conducting simulations or testing, and consulting with experts.
• Using the information gathered in the previous steps, the CIO should then calculate the level of risk associated with each asset. This involves multiplying the likelihood of the threat by the potential impact to determine the overall risk.
• Finally, the CIO should prioritize the identified risks based on the level of risk and the potential impact on the organization’s operations. This will help the CIO to focus resources and efforts on addressing the most critical risks first.

Define business continuity objectives

Based on the risk assessment, the CIO should define business continuity objectives that are aligned with the organization’s overall business strategy. These objectives should include?recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs)?that define how quickly critical systems and infrastructure must be restored and how much data can be lost in the event of a disruption.

Develop recovery strategies

Based on the business continuity objectives, the CIO should develop recovery strategies for each critical IT system and infrastructure. These strategies should include plans for maintaining or restoring operations in the event of a disruption,?including backup and recovery procedures, redundancy and failover mechanisms, and manual workarounds if necessary.

Test and validate recovery strategies

Once recovery strategies have been developed, they should be?tested and validated through a series of exercises and simulations.?This may include tabletop exercises, functional testing, and full-scale simulations to ensure that recovery strategies are effective and can be executed in a timely and efficient manner.

Develop communication and notification procedures

In addition to developing recovery strategies, the CIO should also develop communication and notification procedures that enable effective coordination and communication?among stakeholders in the event of a?disruption. This may include establishing an emergency notification system, developing communication templates, and defining roles and responsibilities for communication and coordination.

Review and update plans

Finally, the CIO should review and update business continuity plans on a regular basis to ensure that they remain effective and relevant. This may involve conducting regular risk assessments, reviewing recovery strategies and communication procedures, and updating plans based on changes in the organization’s business strategy or IT infrastructure.