Review of business continuity plan activations

A recent review of 253 disaster recovery and business continuity plan activations classified the failures and shortcomings of those plans.

The most common issue, occurring in 62% of all recovery plans were basic errors in the plans. Mainly this was due to the plan not being kept up to date (47%), the unavailability or inaccurate passwords (34%), and failure of the initial restoration process (13%).

Additional reasons for failures were: insufficient backup power - 22%; communications not in place - 18%; personnel not adequately trained - 17%; system recovery priorities not identified - 14%; recovery processes not sufficiently documented - 13%; and disruption event not identified quickly enough and therefore the BC plan activation was late - 12%.

It may seem surprising to see a number of SMB companies moving their backup processes to the cloud, which can be a positive step; however some physical media and the control process, needs to be retained or strengthened by the organisations involved.