Business Continuity Planners
What if you were suddenly caught off guard one day by a power outage and internet outage in your home lasting several days in a row, because of severe weather disturbances that caused major damage to the infrastructure in your residential area? Do you have a plan or a solution that would let you keep up with your schoolwork and various daily tasks that need electricity and an internet connection? Something like that would certainly be frustrating for you, and it might keep you and your family from doing a lot of important things — but in the end, it wouldn't be catastrophic for you. On the other hand, disruptions and unexpected events like this can be a disaster and a real threat for businesses, where even just a few hours of downtime can lead to massive financial losses. The disruptions and incidents that can strike institutions are many — they might result from natural disasters, fires, cyberattacks, or other things that, if they happen, would bring operations to a halt. That's why companies and institutions, whether commercial or otherwise, don't wait for disaster to strike before looking for a solution — instead, they have experts known as "business continuity analysts" who make sure they're able to keep running their various operations when disruptions and incidents occur. A business continuity planner is responsible for identifying potential risks to an organization, developing plans to mitigate those risks, and making sure all employees are trained on the plan and know what to do in the event of a disruption. For example, imagine a bank experiencing a power outage during a busy day — without a business continuity plan, it would have to close its doors, which wouldn't just inconvenience its customers, but could also cause major financial losses. However, if the bank has a plan prepared in advance for challenges like this, it would have backup generators, contingency plans for handling cash, and a plan for communicating with customers about the outage. This would allow the bank to keep operating.
Meet the Writer: Waleed Abo Omiraa
What You'll Actually Do
The core tasks and responsibilities that fill a typical day.
- Write reports to summarize testing activities, including descriptions of goals, planning, scheduling, execution, results, analysis, conclusions, and recommendations.
- Maintain and update organization information technology applications and network systems blueprints.
- Interpret government regulations and applicable codes to ensure compliance.
- Establish, maintain, or test call trees to ensure appropriate communication during disaster.
- Design or implement products and services to mitigate risk or facilitate use of technology-based tools and methods.
- Create business continuity and disaster recovery budgets.
- Create or administer training and awareness presentations or materials.
- Attend professional meetings, read literature, and participate in training or other educational offerings to keep abreast of new developments and technologies related to disaster recovery and business continuity.
- Test documented disaster recovery strategies and plans.
- Review existing disaster recovery, crisis management, or business continuity plans.
- Recommend or implement methods to monitor, evaluate, or enable resolution of safety, operations, or compliance interruptions.
- Prepare reports summarizing operational results, financial performance, or accomplishments of specified objectives, goals, or plans.
- Analyze impact on, and risk to, essential business functions or information systems to identify acceptable recovery time periods and resource requirements.
- Identify opportunities for strategic improvement or mitigation of business interruption and other risks caused by business, regulatory, or industry-specific change initiatives.
- Develop disaster recovery plans for physical locations with critical assets, such as data centers.
- Create scenarios to reestablish operations from various types of business disruptions.
- Conduct or oversee contingency plan integration and operation.
- Develop emergency management plans for recovery decision making and communications, continuity of critical departmental processes, or temporary shut-down of non-critical departments to ensure continuity of operation and governance.
- Analyze corporate intelligence data to identify trends, patterns, or warnings indicating threats to security of people, assets, information, or infrastructure.