The Disaster Recovery Plan is the most important item in your armoury. It is what you will turn to if there is indeed a disaster or other serious incident.
Hopefully, you will never have to use it, but if you do, it can be the difference between the loss of your organization and its survival. It is therefore absolutely critical that it is workable - that it is of sufficient quality to guide you through the crisis. Shortcuts here are sheer folly.
AVOID THE BLACK BOX
We sometimes encounter organizations who already have a plan, BUT have little idea how it was generated. Further, the plan itself is sometimes too complicated to understand. Imagine how much harder it might be to grasp these requirements in the midst of disaster!
The first rule therefore is to UNDERSTAND the plan. At the outset, ensure that you understand how it is to be created. Good plans follow a logical process. Ensure that you follow this.
SUPPORT TOOLS
Many products exist to help in this area. Unfortunately some require intensive effort, effort which is sometimes deflected from the prime task (creation of the plan). Partly because of this tendancy, in recent years there has been a shift towards simplicity.
At the vanguard of this shift is a product called The BCP Generator. This has had a major impact on the disaster recovery planning industry. There are a number of reasons for this: the simplicty factor; its relatively low cost; the process it uses; and various others.
The bottom line though is that, through the use of an MS-Word template and accompanying MS-Word Guide, it makes the production of a quality disaster recovery plan much easier and much quicker. For these reasons, the Disaster Recovery Guide itself is now an official distributor of the product, having selected it from a number of offers.
BCP-GENERATOR INFORMATION
The nature of the product makes it impossible to offer an evaluation version. However, the following pages provide a graphic description of the product, including a good number of snapshot images taken directly from from the actual template and guide.
Information on The BCP Generator
|