Geo – Continuity Risk Integration in Drills, Tests and Exercises

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Geo risks across political, people, critical infrastructure, adverse climate events causing disruption are protected through a five-wall structure in the resilience and continuity program. A quick view is represented below for awareness and its correlation with drills, tests, and exercises.

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Four Tenets of Resilience & Continuity are exhibited below providing a view across people safety, asset protection, environment safety and Continuity of Business for important activities. Being ready is a continuous action enabling a vigil for continuous continuity of business.

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The integrated business continuity resilience and risk management practices go hand in hand knitting testing, learning and ongoing risk management control to ensure availability is maintained for both entities – business processes and ICT/ Systems, Platforms, Applications and Data.

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An overview of the Preparations, Init, Mid-way, Terminal phases to enable end to end drills, tests and exercises is provided as a summarized overview.

Resilience & Continuity – Jack & Jill

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Resilience is a capability and continuity are about planning to be continuous. To be resilient a tested continuity plan is equivalent to an insurance.

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Documenting a Business Continuity & ICT DR Plan in Lighthouse

The starting point of being continuous as well as available is to document a business continuity plan with detailed information.

The first step is planning, the second is testing and the third is providing an insight to your customer of

1. What worked,
2. What did not work and
3. What is the partnership and support you are seeking to mitigate availability risks, costs for mitigation and implementation of the continuity plan

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Testing the Business Continuity Plan is VITAL

If a business continuity and ICT disaster recovery plan is not tested it is just a document written with steps. Hence it is imperative that you test your continuity plan end to end for plausible, functional, non-functional as well as worst cast scenarios.

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Testing the data backup and meeting the RPO and RTO is Essential

Data is a vital dependency for applications to continue working and providing services. Data backup restoration is a critical ICT DR test which must be engaged. Checking the capability to meet the Recovery point objective (RPO) and the meeting the Recovery Time objective (RTO) is of immense importance.

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Engage Suppliers, Internal & External Direct & Indirect Dependent entities

Testing suppliers, customer environments, internal support team who provide services and all relevant dependencies which are directly or indirectly related to continuity of services must be engaged in the drill, test, exercise.

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Be Prepared with a Tested Business Continuity & DR Plan Always