Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning for IT Professionals

Powerful Earthquake Triggers Tsunami in Pacific. Hurricane Katrina Makes Landfall in the Gulf Coast. Avalanche Buries Highway in Denver. Tornado Touches Down in Georgia. These headlines not only have caught the attention of people around the world, they have had a significant effect on IT professionals as well.

As technology continues to become more integral to corporate operations at every level of the organization, the job of IT has expanded to become almost all-encompassing. These days, it’s difficult to find corners of a company that technology does not touch. As a result, the need to plan for potential disruptions to technology services has increased exponentially.

That is what Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is: a methodology used to create a plan for how an organization will recover after a disaster of various types. It takes into account both security and corporate risk management tatics.

There is a lot of movement around this initiative in the industry: the British Standards Institute is releasing a new standard for BCP this year. Trade shows are popping up covering the topic.

* Complete coverage of the 3 categories of disaster: natural hazards, human-caused hazards, and accidental and technical hazards.
* Only published source of information on the new BCI standards and government requirements.
* Up dated information on recovery from cyber attacks, rioting, protests, product tampering, bombs, explosions, and terrorism.

Susan Snedaker, currently Director of IT and Information Security Officer at a large community hospital in Arizona, which has achieved HIMSS Analytics Stage 7 (EMR) certification and has been voted 100 Most Wired Hospitals two years in a row. Susan has over 20 years’ experience working in IT in both technical and executive positions including with Microsoft, Honeywell, and VirtualTeam Consulting. Her experience in executive roles has honed her extensive strategic and operational experience in managing data centers, core infrastructure, hardware, software and IT projects involving both small and large teams. Susan holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA) and a Bachelors degree in Management. She is a Certified Professional in Healthcare Information Management Systems (CPHIMS), Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), and was previously certified as a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE), a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT). Susan also holds a certificate in Advanced Project Management from Stanford University and an Executive Certificate in International Management from Thunderbird University’s Garvin School of International Management. She is the author of six books and numerous chapters on a variety of technical and IT subjects.