Business Continuity
Identifying Critical Resources in the event of a Disaster
When deciding on what level of disaster recovery and business continuity is required for your business, you need to identify the critical resources. The Business Continuity Planning Manager will need to access what Recovery Time Objective and Recovery Point Objective is needed for these services.
The BCP Manager will need to review the following and decide what ciritical to support the business are:
- List each server e.g. Exchange, Database Servers, File & Print etc.
- No. Of staff needed to maintain the business while recoverying from the disaster
- Access to the facility/office
- Access to the Phone System
Next the Business Continuity Manager needs to determine the outage impacts and allowable outage times for critical resources:
Example:
| Resource | Outage Impact | Allowable Outage Time |
| Exchange/Email | Unable to access email | 4 hours |
| Accounts database | Unable to access accounts/billing etc | 6 hours |
| SQL Database/CRM database | Unable to access critical client information | 8 hours |
| Office Facility | Unable to access office | 5 days |
| Phone System |
Unable to receive/make telephone calls |
2 hours |
Using the table above, the Business Continuity Manager develops recovery priorities for the business. The Manager uses a simple high, medium, low scale to prioritise. High priorities are based on the need to restore critical resources within their allowable outage time. Medium and Low priorities reflect the requirement to restore full operational capabilities over a longer recovery period.
Example:
| Resource | Recovery Priority |
| Telephone System | High |
| Exchange/Email | High |
| Accounts System | High/Medium |
| Office Facility | Low |
Once this process is completed it allows the Business Continuity Manager to develop recovery strategies that enable the network to be recovered in a prioritised manner.