FEATURE: BUSINESS CONTINUITY //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
the reputation with employees and more
so external suppliers. Beyond a lack of
completeness, there is also a significant issue
around ‘decision authority’ to actually declare
the event that a failover is to happen. This is well as internal and external stakeholders.
Then build the BC/DR plan around that
with the tools available today. And there
are no excuses today to not meet the
needs and expectations.
ABOVE ALL, ORGANISATIONS NEED TO
KNOW WHAT THEIR EXPECTATIONS ARE
FROM USERS AS WELL AS INTERNAL
AND EXTERNAL STAKEHOLDERS.
something that is critical as it takes some time
to do this, no matter what is in place.
Werno Gevers, cyber
resilience expert at
Mimecast MEA
How important is it that
BC platforms satisfy
compliance requirements?
Compliance and BC/DR platforms are an
excellent complement to each other. For
one, organisations can adequately test
critical systems for changes, security topics
and to ensure that they will operate as
expected in a DR situation. Additionally, BC/
DR platforms provide a great audit trail of
critical applications. Such as even simple
questions of what they are in regards to the
infrastructure and the business function.
Additionally, having visibility to the business
stakeholders of these applications is critical
as well.
How can speed of recovery
be ensured?
Having the best platforms and tools in place
will dictate the recovery speed. I’d challenge
that there is no zero RTO full orchestrated DR
solution. Organisations need to know what
their infrastructure, applications and data
require for a DR experience.
How often do BC systems need
to be updated?
How important is it for
enterprises to ensure they
have an effective BC platform
in operation?
At Veeam our principle BC/DR failover
construct is a replication engine that can
recover workloads in just moments, but
considerations around sequencing around
other applications will make results vary. In today’s information-driven world, uptime
and being able to continue with business
as usual is critical to any organisation.
Employees have zero tolerance for downtime
as it means potential lost revenue and
impacts customer service and productivity.
Email access is critical to business continuity
management. Of all the aspects of business
continuity management, ensuring access to
email during a planned or unplanned outage
must be a top priority.
But above all, organisations need to know
what their expectations are from users as An email outage can wreak havoc
throughout an organisation, as email
46
INTELLIGENTCIO
has become indispensable to business
communication. When an email outage
prevents users from sending or receiving
email, business grinds to a halt. Consistent
communication and fast service restoration
are an absolute must, which is why email
disaster recovery must be a huge part of any
business continuity conversation. Another
key challenge faced by businesses during
an outage is access to information. This is
essential as you still need to service and
support customers and suppliers. In order
to ensure constant access to business-
critical information, all organisations
should host their data in a fully encrypted,
immutable archive. This way, they gain
long-term business insights and create a
digital corporate memory. This dramatically
decreases the risk of data loss or corruption
after a cyberattack, human error or technical
failure. Having continuity and archiving in
place, forms an essential part of any cyber
resilience strategy, which is a crucial element
of business continuity in today’s cyberthreat
landscape. Cyberattacks are evolving, so it’s
no longer enough to have security in place.
Organisations need to be prepared before,
during and after an attack, with advanced
security, email continuity and the ability to
recover data with a secure archive, so they
can continue with business as usual.
Business continuity always needs to be
up-to-date, otherwise it defeats the purpose
of having such a solution in place. The best
way to ensure that your system is always
up-to-date is by using a software as a service
(SaaS) model. This is subscription based and
is hosted in the cloud. By adopting a SaaS
solution, organisations don’t need to worry
about purchasing updates, but instead enjoy
automatic updates that are deployed by the
provider. It’s important to remember that
business continuity events are only as good
as your last test. Continuity events should
be tested frequently to ensure the fail over
process works seamlessly without affecting
the employees.
Is one of the shortfalls of BC
platforms that they become
obsolete quickly?
This is true if you’re totally dependent on
an on-premises solution, but if you’re using
www.intelligentcio.com