The Forgotten Side of Disaster Recovery

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The Forgotten Side of Disaster Recovery

George Jucan, MSc, PMP, OCP

June 19, 2006






Disaster recovery and business continuity were always hot topics on every company's agenda, and they became even more so in recent years when terrorist attacks were added to the traditional natural disasters to plan for.
 
Most organizations today have a detailed disaster recovery plan, but most of these plans are focused on restoring the physical systems required to support core business operations, such as equipment, computers, network, communications, etc. They include systems rebuild procedures, backup power, alternate communication lines, escalation lists and so on. However, almost all of them assume that the people who operate the systems and who they need to communicate with will be available. But is that true anymore?
 
Let's remember the SARS outbreak in 2004, the terrorist attack of 9/11 or even consider a public transit strike: These types of events will cripple the workforce, either because people are incapacitated (sick, hurt or simply stuck in traffic) or because they decided to not show up at the workplace to avoid becoming incapacitated (to not get sick, not become a victim or just to not waste precious hours in a futile attempt to reach the workplace).
 
Most companies include some sort of human resources component in their disaster recovery plan, but very rarely it is as thoroughly defined as the technical aspects of recovery.



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