Understanding the risks and potential business impact of a disruption to your system is critical for business recovery and continuity. If you’ve been changing, upgrading and improving your solutions architecture or technology, you may need to take a look at whether your business continuity plan needs an update. Being prepared relies on a well-designed systems architecture that has BCP and disaster recovery capability and capacity built into it.
Why is business continuity planning important?
The experience of the Covid-19 pandemic shone a bright light on the kind of unexpected events that can have a huge impact on your organisation’s operations.
Business disruption can come in many forms, from natural disasters like cyclones, flood, fire and lightning strikes, to cyber-attacks, IT failures, supply chain problems, pandemics or shortage of staff with the right skills.
Being ready with a business continuity plan can be the difference between timely recovery and complete business failure. A business continuity plan is your blueprint for an effective response and a quicker recovery when disaster strikes.
Understanding the foundations of BCP
Assessment, preparedness, response and recovery are the foundations of business continuity. A solution architecture that is robust and resilient is at the core of successful response and recovery.
Assessment
The assessment component of BCP includes:
- hazard identification
- risk evaluation
- business impact analysis (BIA).
Assessment as you design and implement your solution architecture gives you a clear view of your systems and how they interact. This will help you be prepared.
Preparedness
Being prepared involves ensuring that your business continuity plan will work in a wide range of disruptions, likely and unlikely, high and low impact. Having the right technology, systems and teams in place are all part of being prepared for disruption.
Response
The response stage of business continuity planning is also about having the right teams in place, in addition to well-documented and rehearsed response procedures and an emergency operations centre that will function for a variety of possible disruptions.
Tip: in the event of a disruption, keep a record of the damage, your response and any curve balls. Documenting the lessons learned in a corrective action plan will help you be better prepared for a similar crisis in the future.
Recovery
Recovery is the process of restoring business functions to operate at pre-incident levels as soon as possible. Full recovery in acceptable timeframes will rely heavily on a flexible, scalable, modular and secure system architecture.
Solution architecture at the core of effective business continuity planning
To support an effective business continuity plan, a solution architecture should be:
- scalable. Incorporating scalability will ensure your systems can accommodate increased demands or usage spikes that can occur during a crisis, while maintaining service availability
- modular and flexible. a modular design makes it possible to isolate and contain issues. This helps prevent the spread of disruptions across the entire system. A flexible architecture can access alternative resources or adapt to other modes of operation during a crisis.
Other considerations include:
- security measures: during a crisis or disruption, the risk of security breaches may increase. An architecture that incorporates security measures can more easily defend against potential threats.
- robust backup and recovery mechanisms: these would include regular backups of critical data, defined recovery processes, and the ability to restore operations swiftly after an incident
- redundancy: a well-designed solution architecture reduces the risk of potential failures by incorporating redundancy, failover mechanisms, and graceful degradation. Ths approach ensures that the system can continue operating or quickly recover even if certain components fail
- clear processes and documentation: in times of crisis, documentation and processes guide recovery. They are particularly helpful for team members who may not be familiar with the complexities of your systems.
At 9Yards, we ensure that business continuity is built into every level of the solution architecture we design. Everything comes back to good solution architecture.
Scenarios and simulations
Scenario testing and simulations are an excellent way to train response teams and other staff so they understand your BCP thoroughly. You should test your business continuity plan at least annually.
“When you’re testing business continuity and disaster recovery scenarios, start with a horrific scenario – something that really is going to challenge everybody. And then add some really big twists as you go through the test.” – Jodie Rugless, senior consultant at 9Yards.
There are infinite variations and twists that could occur in a real life disruption. The point of pushing scenarios out to the worst imaginable situation and adding twists and turns is not to predict all possible variations. Instead, this approach helps your response team learn to expect the unexpected and respond flexibly to minimise the impact.
Is it time to review your BCP against your solution architecture?
Disaster recovery and business continuity are not add-ons or afterthoughts. They need to be embedded into your solution architecture.
Be ready for the next disruption with a business continuity plan that reflects your solution architecture design and current state, while considering your digital transformation roadmap.
If you’re not 100% confident that business continuity and disaster recovery have been built into your service delivery design, the best time to check is now.
Contact 9Yards solutions architecture and business continuity experts to get the conversation started.
9Yards expertise in business continuity planning
All of our consultants are aware of the importance of embedding business continuity and disaster recovery into solution architecture and digital transformation strategies. Taking experience to the next level, 9Yards senior consultant Jodie Rugless was managing a data centre when Severe Tropical Cyclone Debbie made landfall near the Whitsundays in March 2017. That hands-on experience of disaster recovery has given her some invaluable insights, which we have incorporated into this blog post.
Further reading
ISO 22301 Security and resilience, Business continuity management systems is the international standard for BCP. The standard aligns with other ISO standards. The standard should be on the mandatory reading list for business continuity and risk professionals and anyone in your organisation who is involved or interested in business continuity planning.
