Major weather events usually occur in 25, 50 and 100-year cycles. Disease outbreaks are also a big threat. A potential flu pandemic could be detrimental to many businesses. For example, the bird flu pandemic scenarios that are floating around are being modeled on the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. That global outbreak killed 500,000 people in the United States and more than 20 million people worldwide. Since that time there have been two other smaller scale flu pandemics, each that killed hundreds of thousands of people. The flu is just one disease that can cause a business disaster situation around the world (Business Continuity during a Disaster, 2008).
Recent years have also shown that terrorism threats are a real possibility that needs to be considered. Terrorism is a great threat because there is so much uncertainty about when, where or what kind of attack may next occur. The attack could be nuclear or biological in nature with the possibility of being very widespread. Any analysis of potential threats should include probabilities of each threat occurrence with time frames in which critical functions must be resumed after the disaster (Business Continuity during a Disaster, 2008).
It is important that someone within an organization be responsible for making the continuity plan work. People within the organization must be identified to assume key roles should a disaster occur. This phase of a disaster plan needs depth to include more than one person or group assigned to each role, in case the first person or group is incapacitated by the disaster. This section of the plan should identify who is responsible for what activity or strategy both during the disaster and during the recovery phase following the disaster event (Business Continuity during a Disaster, 2008).
The next step is in putting a plan together is to develop strategies for pre-event, event and the recovery phases of the disaster. These strategies need to include developing training programs; laying down procedures for notifying and mobilizing key employees; establishing policies for contacting key public officials, police, informational media, emergency response personnel and hospitals and data backup and protection procedures. These strategies should also identify goals for minimally acceptable time frames for restoration of critical functions and systems (Business Continuity during a Disaster, 2008).
In addition to set time frames, these strategies should establish the amount of critical data or function loss that is acceptable. Management needs to decide what amount of loss is acceptable, or if alternative strategies should be implemented to reduce potential loss (Business Continuity during a Disaster, 2008). This is very important to have established well ahead of any disaster that might happen.
The next step is disaster planning is to identify what triggers when a continuity plan is to be activated. For example, when the local emergency management office declares a state of emergency would that be the trigger point. If it is then at that point the organization would be in crisis mode and management should be first concerned with stabilizing and preventing further damage. Implementation should involve emergency response or evacuation procedures, delegation of authority or responsibility and following checklists for recovery and restoration. One necessary component of crisis management is communications which includes communications taking place before, during and after the event. This would include communications with employees, customers, the community, regulatory agencies, shareholders, directors and any others affected by the situation. A good way to handle this is to develop a sequential call tree. Under this situation each member of a small group is each responsible for making a few phone calls to an assigned list of people. The members of this second group in turn each call a few more people and so on creating a communications network (Business Continuity during a Disaster, 2008).
Once a disaster event has occurred, the recovery process must begin as quickly as possible. This might include caring for the sick and injured along with stopping loss or damage. It might also include making repairs to facilities, and reestablishing service or product delivery. Usually the first step is to restore electrical power. Power is needed for basic essentials such as pumping water, making ice, preserving and cooking food. Restoration of power is essential before any other plans can be put into place or carried out (Business Continuity during a Disaster, 2008).
Once a disaster recovery plan has been devised and recovery procedures have been developed, it must be tested in order to work out any problem areas. Testing provides for additional training to staff. One method of training that is often used is that of creating roundtable discussions. In these discussions a disaster scenario is presented and then each person is responsible for describing how his or her department or responsibility would respond to the event. As...
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