Best Practices to Effectively Respond to & Recover from Disasters: Webinar Takeaways

Preparis recently hosted a webinar on Best Practices to Effectively Respond to & Recover from Disasters with training and customer solutions manager Kayla McMahan and sales enablement manager Mark Norton. Below are some of the key takeaways.

Takeaway 1: Business continuity planning is a cyclical process that assesses risks, identifies threats, and develops recovery plans.

Mark Norton explained the importance of business continuity planning, saying, "By funding a continuity plan, it's almost like you're funding a gap analysis that you can do to really quantify that level of risk and then go forward in making sure that you have the appropriate plan in place." He also noted that "business continuity as a subject matter or as a practice is cyclical in nature."

Norton outlined the four key elements of recovery: office space, power, technology, and communications. He also discussed the importance of preparation and planning.

Takeaway 2: Business continuity planning protects businesses from unexpected disruptions.

McMahan explained that business continuity planning is an important step to protect businesses from unexpected disruptions. "One of the first things you can do to aid your business continuity planning is to perform a business impact analysis," she said.

This analysis is used to identify the entity's critical business functions and determine the recovery time objectives. McMahan also outlined alternative business continuity strategies such as developing manual workaround procedures, reciprocal agreements, and dual usage space. Additionally, she suggested conducting a cost-benefit analysis to compare internal and external solutions and address supply chain issues.

McMahan also explained that after a business continuity plan is created, it's important to test and exercise it.

"We want to develop a program that meets the entity's business continuity program scope and objectives that we have. We want to develop a specific exercise or test schedule. You want to identify lessons learned and actions for improvement."

She also suggested monitoring the progress of action items, documenting lessons learned, and communicating the results of the exercise or test throughout the organization.

Takeaway 3: Business continuity planning is key to an organization's risk management strategy.

McMahan highlighted the importance of minimizing operational downtime and protecting data, as well as providing a basis for a recovery plan and allocating resources for testing.

"In a recovery situation, it's crucial to have a disaster plan that defines the highest prioritized tasks and this BIA accomplishes this for you."

Norton noted that it is important to make sure the critical functions and risks are identified in the business impact analysis and that the four basic elements of the environment are in place for employees to perform. He also emphasized the importance of being proactive rather than reactive.

McMahan then discussed Preparis' software, which simplifies the continuity planning process and allows access to the features and capabilities needed without excess complexity. "Within our Preparis software, we have Preparis Incident Manager, and this brings your plan to life during a disruption," she said.

"It allows you to delegate tasks to your team, and it feeds your business-critical processes into an overarching dashboard." Norton then added that the software also offers low-cost solutions.