We're about to test our newly created Business Continuity Plan. But before the testing, we want to do bench marking to other companies who implement the plan during actual disaster. To gain more knowledge and techniques on how to go about it.
Does anybody knows what companies are into this? We prepare companies located near the Philippines. Thank you.
Replies
Hi Jeffrey,
I am just curious why you would benchmark BCP? With BCP aren't you better off trying to make sure you can recover your systems based on the SLAs you provide to the business rather than other businesses?
Thanks
Ketan
Agree with Vijay.
The testing of the BCP is important even though sometimes is difficult to create a scenario and act as it was real.
Something that I think it can strenght the response and mitigate some of the problems that aren't observed during a test is document all the events that occurr during the year, with a description of the event, areas affected, actions taken, difficulties observed, recommendations and lessons learned.
There are various level of program maturity. You should try to determine your firm's level of maturity and develop reasonable time frames and methods for moving your firm's program up the maturity scale. In bench marking, you might try to find firms similar to yours (same general region, similar business size/revenues, similar business segment) and develop a collegiate relationship of sharing the BCP program's success and pitfalls.
I don't know of any companies that post or share their results from their BCP testing. What may be more realistic is to connect with some peer companies in a more private setting and share some of this information internally. This can help establish a baseline and best practice. Hope this helps.
John
Hi Jeff- Depending upon the maturity of BCP plans and teams, there are different levels of BCP testing that is done. Right from Walkthrough of the plan to a functional or full scale test. So you might want to see where you are in your continuity maturity path and accordingly decide the level of testing. Hope this helps.. Thanks
Hi Jeffrey, Just to clairfy, we perform testing twice a year on all our crtical systems and infrastructure and essentially have dashboard showing what worked well and what requires improvement. It includes systems response time including telephony systems with a script to inform clients on the disaster recovery process, sms messages which worked and those that failed. With regards to our critical applications, what was the response time and whether the information in the applications were current or old. If old, how old!