Hurricane Irene: What Financial Services Firms Can Do Now to Prepare
August 25, 2011 12:00 AM
5. Choose an owner.
5. Choose an owner.
Decide who will oversee the disaster recovery process -- and make sure that person has a backup in case they are unavailable. This is a people event, not just a technology event, Duke advised.
4. Do a business impact analysis.
4. Do a business impact analysis.
Decide as soon as possible where your team will start in the disaster recovery process. What are the most important things to have up and running first? says Duke. Have everyone in the organization working toward the same goals.
3. Gather and organize employee, vendor contact information.
3. Gather and organize employee, vendor contact information.
Make sure you know how to get in touch with all of your key employees through different mediums -- cell phones, e-mail, social networks and so on. The same goes for key vendors: You dont want to be searching at the last minute for contact information for your utility vendors, vendors, core processor, network IT vendors and disaster recovery specialists.
2. Expect employee absences and make contingency plans.
2. Expect employee absences and make contingency plans.
Theres a high likelihood that some of your key employees wont be available during and after the storm because theyll be dealing with its impact on their property and families. So youll need redundancy. Work out how to delegate the responsibilities held by your key people, advises Duke.
1. Have a comprehensive IT systems schematic/drawing.
1. Have a comprehensive IT systems schematic/drawing.
Make sure you have an inventory of all your IT systems and a schematic of how this infrastructure is laid out. Make sure its updated and make sure that its offsite. The schematic will allow your institution to immediately start on recovery rather than trying to determine what was on the network.A picture says a thousand words," says Zach Duke, executive vice president of business development with Safe Systems, Inc., a disaster recovery planning firm in Alpharetta, Ga.
Hurricane Irene: What Financial Services Firms Can Do Now to Prepare
Hurricane Irene: What Financial Services Firms Can Do Now to Prepare
Hurricane Irene is expected to make landfall Saturday in coastal North Carolina before making its way up the coast to New York City sometime this weekend. The storm is shaping up to be the strongest to hit the East Coast in 20 years and financial firms are scrambling to minimize the impact on their technology and operations.
Click through this interactive slideshow for a preparedness checklist so you know what you and your firm can do now before Irene arrives.
