Business continuity
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery are often used as interchangeable terms; however current management thinking is that Disaster Recover is a sub-set of Business Continuity.
A Business Continuity Plan has long been considered a luxury that only large companies can afford. The reality of course is that Business Continuity Planning is a necessity for all companies irrespective of size.
The Six Sigma process has been written to cover large companies - which means that it is simple to chop out the bits that are superfluous for micro, small and medium sized companies and produce an appropriate Business Continuity Plan.
For micro and small companies, having a Business Continuity Plan could mean the difference between the life and death of a business if one of the many kind of disasters strikes.
"90% of companies who suffer a significant loss of data go out of business within two years" - London Chamber of Commerce
Disasters come in all shapes and sizes ranging from major events - loss of critical people, floods, fire and structural damage - through to loss of laptops and corruption of disk drives.
Business Recovery Practices:-
5 Worst Practices
1. No senior management support
2 No Risk Assessment
3. No written Plan
4. Non-validated back-up
5. Poor data storage
5 Best Practices
1. Executive backing and a proper budget
2. Knowing which assets are critical or expendable
3. A Plan that everyone can understand
4. Back-up data that can be read and restored
5. Secure off-site storage with quick data retrieval