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Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery: How to Prepare Your Business
Michael Croy, Director, Business Continuity Solutions
eWeek.com 07.24.2008
Companies frequently don't like to think about business continuity, disaster recovery, the expense of hot sites or even off-site storage. But, as Michael Croy explains, you have to ask yourself how much you're willing to lose. If you can't afford to lose it, then BC/DR is for you.

Core Principles of BC/DR
Peter Laz, Senior Consultant, Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery
Disaster Recovery Journal 04.01.2008
When effective managers are building any kind of program or looking to enhance a current program, one of the questions they ask is, “what do successful programs have in common?” Establishing a business continuity or IT disaster recovery capability is no different. There are common elements that successful programs share. Four of those elements are described.

When Disaster Strikes Will Your People Be Prepared?
Michael Croy, Director, Business Continuity Solutions
Disaster Recovery Journal 01.01.2008
While many organizations have built plans for the recovery of their IT operations in the event of a disaster, the well being of their most valuable asset – their people – is often overlooked. Within the walls of the data center, we can accurately measure what the impacts of a disaster will be. But the human response to a disaster cannot be predicted.

Final Thoughts: Behaviors for Effective BC/DR Professionals
Peter Laz, Senior Consultant, Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery
Continuity Insights 07.2007
We all want to be effective business continuity/disaster recovery professionals, right? While there's no silver bullet, there are some characteristics that successful professionals share. In fact, there are four consistent behaviors I have found in top quality BC/DR professionals in my many years in the profession.

Enterprise, Know Thyself!
Michael Croy, Director, Business Continuity Solutions
Disaster Recovery Journal 04.25.2007
Michael Croy, director of business continuity solutions explains how enterprises that can see the connection and use their self-knowledge to invest accordingly are the enterprises that will endure not only at time of crisis, but in the day-to-day marketplace.

Managing Your Organization’s (Information) Assets
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
Computer Technology Review 03.08.2007
Effective information storage management boils down to a company’s definitively understanding and paying attention to the four phases of its information’s metamorphosis: Creation, Access, Retention and Deletion (“CARD”). James E. Geis, director of integrated solutions development for Forsythe Technology Inc., explains how to ensure that critical information assets are treated in a way that storage is secure and recoverable.

Ask the Executive Inverview with Doni Perry
Peter Laz, Senior Consultant, Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery
Disaster Recovery Journal 01.2007
Doni Perry is the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Sea Star Line, LLC. Joining Sea Star Line, LLC in 2004, he has been instrumental in the maturing of Sea Star Line’s IT vision and development of their business continuity and disaster planning posture.

How Prepared Are We? Business Continuity Planning in the Face of Pandemic (And Other Threats)
Michael Croy, Director, Business Continuity Solutions
ContinuityInsights.com 12.01.2006
Is pandemic a different kind of threat? What is the potential risk to the organization? What can organizations do to prepare for a pandemic?

Business Continuity After Hurricane Katrina
Michael Croy, Director, Business Continuity Solutions
Financial Executives International 05.17.2006
With hurricane season 2006 soon upon us, a business-continuity expert discusses how last year’s disasters have changed corporate thinking, and offers tips for becoming aware and prepared.

IP Communications is Transforming Business Continuity Planning
Michael Croy, Director, Business Continuity Solutions
Richard Zimmermann, Vice President, Network and Security Solutions
ContinuityInsights.com 04.01.2006
Michael Croy, director of business continuity and Richard Zimmermann, director of network solutions marketing at Forsythe Solutions discuss how IP communications can enable improvements in an organization’s day-to-day business processes and operations.

NIMS/ICS in a Private Sector Company
Peter Laz, MBCP, Senior Consultant, Business Continutiy/Disaster Recovery
Disaster Recovery Journal 03.2006
Most people are aware that the National Incident Management System/Incident Command System (NIMS/ICS) was developed, refined and is used heavily by public sector entities. These include the federal Department of Homeland Security, state and county Emergency Management Office and local fire and police departments.

Speaking of Business Continuity: A Cheat Sheet
Michael Croy, Director, Business Continuity Solutions
SearchCIO 07.16.2005
One of the challenges organizations often face as they initiate business continuity or disaster recovery planning is to reach consensus on precisely what they are trying to do. This requires identifying an closing any gap that may exist between the actual availability/recoverability of the organization’s information systems and the ability/recoverability expected by the business units and executive management.

Acronym Soup: BCP, DR, EBR… What Does It All Mean?
Michael Croy, Director, Business Continuity Solutions
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
Disaster Recovery 07.01.2005
With all the terms and abbreviations being used today regarding risk management – BCP, DR, EBR, RPO, RTO, SLA, etc. – a conversation about data protection and risk mitigation sounds like a bowl of acronym soup And this stew of confusion is peppered with an urgent sense that such matters need to be addressed PDQ. In fact, major technology decisions are currently being made in an attempt to respond to pressing issues. But, at the same time, many still ask, “What does this all really mean? Why are people trying to sell me on a business continuity plan when we already have a solid disaster recovery solution in place?”

Being Prepared in the 21st Century: Current and Emerging Trends in Business Continuity
Michael Croy, Director, Business Continuity Solutions
Disaster Recovery Journal 01.01.2005
Since 2000, our world has seen dramatic changes that have caused an evolution in business continuity thinking. It used to be that recovery-minded organizations focused on preventing and avoiding disasters. Today, it seems inevitable that nearly everyone will be faced with unexpected “bumps” in the terrain from time to time. The focus is changing from avoidance of threat to “landing on your feet” in spite of it.

Recovery Sites: To Insource or Outsource… That is the Question
Michael Croy, Director, Business Continuity Solutions
CIO.com 12.02.2004
Disaster recovery hot sites are a hot topic these days, and for good reason. Information systems have grown more important to the success of an organization than ever before. Unless executives carefully evaluate their investments in recovery sites, their organizations can get burned by insufficient access, slow recovery times, and unexpected costs.

The Business Value of Data
Michael Croy, Director, Business Continutiy Solutions
Disaster Recovery Journal 07.01.2004
What’s the value of your organization’s data? The ability of business and IT managers to answer that question directly correlates to the success of their company’s business continuity and data recovery efforts. The answer is difficult to provide, given the massive amounts of data coursing through organizations and the fact that the value of data changes frequently and quickly in today’s unpredictable, highly competitive, and increasingly regulated business environment.

Six Tips for IT in Planning a Business Continuity Strategy
Michael Croy, Director, Business Continuity Solutions
Computerworld 05.04.2004
IT has begun to be recognized for what it is: a tool that has the power to bring business continuity in alignment with overarching business goals. Here is a strategy for the IT department to consider when determining its role in closing the business continuity gap.

What Business Continuity Means for Compliance
Michael Croy, Director, Business Continuity Solutions
Optimize 05.01.2004
Sarbanes-Oxley, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, Graham-Leach-Bliley, and other industry-specific rule changes have ushered in a regulatory era that greatly values risk management and increase the penalties for companies and individuals whose risk-management practices fall short. Disaster recovery and business continuity represent a central, but frequently misunderstood, component of a company’s overarching risk-management strategy. Successful, long-term compliance and related productivity gains depend on clearly up misconceptions about business continuity and weaving it into the strategic fabric.

Closing the Business Continuity Gap: Responding to Risks in Unprecedented Times
Michael Croy, Director, Business Continuity Solutions
Continuity Insights 09.01.2003
A business continuity gap is created by a difference between the actual availability of an organization’s information systems and the level of availability expected by its business units. In most organizations, this is a blind gap that is not discovered until a major disruption in business or a major disaster strikes — even in organizations with sophisticated business continuity programs in place. The gap is often the result of years of changes to the business, the IT infrastructure, the business environment, and global conditions. Closing the gap, which protects the viability of the organization and supports the fiscal and fiduciary responsibilities of the business as a whole, involved the IT organization, the business units, and the company’s key executives. Only when all entities participate in identifying and assessing vulnerabilities, can effective risk management strategies be developed for each vulnerability. The risk management strategy may include one or more of the following: accepting the risk through financial reserves, assigning the risk to an insurer or an outsourcer, or mitigating the risk with a combination of proactive and reactive strategies appropriate for the organization’s existing IT infrastructure and recovery objectives.
Information Security

Tech Road Map: EKMI
David Brown, Managing Consultant, Security Advisory Services
InformationWeek.com 06.28.2008
Information security pros do put stock in encryption--it was named the third-most-effective security practice in our most recent Strategic Security Survey, behind only firewalls and antivirus products. However, there have been obstacles along the path to ubiquitous encryption of data, including weak ciphers, deployment and integration issues, and, perhaps most notably, key management.

Incident Response: Communication is Key
David Brown, Managing Consultant, Security Advisory Services
Security Magazine 01.2008
When an incident response team is faced with a potential security breach or data loss, there are myriad concerns to address. Many incident management plans address technical issues such as investigation, containment and recovery. But, it is essential that each phase of the plan also covers communication – a key requirement for effective incident response.

The Corporate Culture Perspective
Pamela Fredericks, Director, Security Advisory Services
Security Magazine.com 09.01.2007
Organizations are in the midst of a cultural evolution, one that is making information security and privacy protection part of expected corporate behaviors. For employees, data breaches and the reality of identity theft have driven home the importance of privacy and protection for personal data on the job – the data in the corporation might well be your own.

Identity Theft’s Impact on the Information Security Program
Pamela Fredericks, Director, Security Advisory Services
ISSA Journal 10.09.2006
Identity theft is usually considered to be a consumer issue rather than a corporate one – a matter of privacy rather than security. However, it is both of course, because there are now two types of data in most organizations.

Protecting Your Information Assets: The Crossroads of Data Storage and Data Security
Pamela Fredericks, Director, Security Advisory Services
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
Information Storage and Security Journal 02.28.2006
Ever since the introduction of Open Systems into the data center, a problem has been brewing. Too often, the storage environment isn’t seen as an area with security considerations. Until recently, corporate security policies rarely considered the data center storage environment; sometimes there was no real link between the two. Security was managed at the operating system level or within applications, and a storage location was seen as purely a physical hardware issue with little bearing on user access or security controls.

Security and Privacy Principles
Pamela Fredericks, Director, Security Advisory Services
Line56.com 06.21.2005
Enterprises know that they must keep information safe, correct, and accessible. They must also be practitioners of responsible information management by maintaining transparency about their practices and letting those involved know their responsibilities as well as their rights. But, does this mission describe the principles behind information security, data privacy or both? The correct answer is both. Security and privacy are based on common principles, and their objectives are accomplished in remarkably similar ways.

Compliance Hindsight: What Organizations Have Learned from Early Compliance Approaches
Pamela Fredericks, Director, Security Advisory Services
Evan Tegethoff, Former Practice Manager, Security Solutions
CIO.com 04.06.2005
In today’s regulatory environment, lessons learned today will have big payoffs down the line. Here are some tips for aligning business with security risk.