Action Point Event in conjunction with ABC Solutions & Dell: The Cost of Downtime. Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Strategies.

1. In partnership with
Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery
Strategies for Success

2. About Action Point
 Established 8 Years - 2005 to 2013
 Average growth rate of 48% per Year
 30 Employees
 First Dell Certified Partner in Ireland
 Overall Winner in Limerick County Enterprise Awards 2011
 Winner Best SME Award Midwest 2011
 Winner Best Technology Business Award Midwest 2012

3. Our Services

4. Clients include

5. Clients include

6. Business Continuity Management
The Cost of Downtime
Speaker: Michael O’Regan
ABC Solutions
Michael O’Regan established Absolute Business Continuity
Solutions Ltd in 2005 and has over 10 years’ experience in
business continuity planning. ABC Solution’s primary function
is to aid small to medium enterprises in establishing business
continuity arrangements to enable them to weather any
incidents that may occur.

7. Business Continuity Management
Agenda:
 Business Continuity Overview
 Business Continuity Plans – Key Contents
 Business Continuity Planning – IT Relationship

8. What is the Business requirement?
 To provide the service, ideally 100% of the
time, in a timely manner, to an acceptable
level – may be defined in contract/SLA
 Stated another way – to reduce the risk of
service interruption to an acceptable level
 If an incident occurs to be able to recover as
quickly as possible with as little disruption to
the service as possible

9. What is Business Continuity Management (BCM)?
BCM is about ensuring that your Business
prepares a plan to handle a serious incident.
During this process you can identify ways to
reduce the risk of an incident happening and
minimise the impact if it does happen.
If an incident occurs key staff should be
trained to handle the situation through testing
and exercising which will enable your business
to continue to function to the agreed level
with the least disruption possible.

10. Drivers for Business Continuity Management
Key Stakeholders:
 Customers/Clients
 Regulator – Financial Regulator
 Insurance Company
 Staff
 IT providers

11. Categories of Operational Risk
 Environmental Disasters – Fire, Floods
 Organized or Deliberate Disruptions – Labour dispute, Fraud
 Loss of Utilities or Services – Power, water, waste, phones
 Equipment or System Failure – Internal Power; Air Conditioning
 Serious Information Security Incidents – Laptop stolen;
Disclosure of sensitive files; IT systems failure
 Other Emergency Situations – Negative publicity;
Mergers & Acquisitions

12. Cork suburb badly hit by overnight flooding
March 2013

15. 27/1/11 – 10 Revenue laptops stolen

17. June 2012 - Ulster Bank
payment problems to persist
until the end of the week

19. Exercise/tests vital to success
Blue Light Services (Fire brigade, Gardai, Ambulance)
carry out regular training exercises – this is why they
are prepared for the real thing!

20. BCP Plan contents
 List of critical activities
 IT dependencies
 Alternative work area requirements
 Contact details – Staff, Clients etc.
 Incident Management details
 Testing/Exercising
 BCP Policy
 BCP Support infrastructure

21. BCM process overview
Backup &
Recovery Strategy
Recovery Activities
Incident
ID Recovery Teams
 Emergency
 Disaster Recovery
 Business Recovery
Risk Analysis
Threat => Probability & Impact
ID Controls – in place; required
(Reduce risk to acceptable level)

22. Key output from BCM process
Identify Mission Critical Activities (MCA)
Identify key InputsOutputs,
Key Suppliers; Documents
Identify Maximum Tolerable Outage (MTO)
and Minimum Essential Service (MES)
Define the:
Recovery Point Objectives (RPO)
to what point in time you need to recover the MCA
Recovery Time Objectives (RTO)
how quickly you need to recover the MCA

23. Recovery Management Objectives
Define RTO and RPO
Backup to Disk
Replication
RPO RTO
Wks Days Mins SecsHrs WksDaysMinsSecs Hrs
Tape Backup
with Offsite Storage
Fail-Over/Replication
Backup to Disk
How much data loss can
your business endure?
Lost transactions = Lost business
How much downtime can
your business endure?
Time is money
Recovery from Tape

24. Testing/Exercises
Needs to consider different scenarios…
 Fire/flood impacting data centre
 Fire/flood impacting work area
 Data corruption
 Loss of broadband
 Loss of phones
 Supplier incidents

25. Critical Suppliers
 ID critical suppliers
 What would happen if they had an incident?
 Do they have a proven BCP plan?
 What alternatives exist?

26. Next Steps - Outline Process to put BC Plan in place
 Review current state of risks – ID gaps
 Prepare plan to eliminate gaps
 Document the plan
 Test/exercise the plan
 Annual Review or after major change

27. COFFEE BREAK

28. Continuity & Technology
What are the top causes of downtime?
 Natural Disasters?
 Human Error?
 Hardware Failure?
 Software Failure?

29. Continuity & Technology
Top causes of downtime:
 Natural Disasters 5%
 Human Error 22%
 Hardware Failure 55%
 Software Failure 18%
 Average Recovery Time – 30 Hours
Source: Quorum. Q1 2013

30. Continuity & Technology
 73% of downtime relates to Information
Technology & Information Systems
5%
22%
55%
18%
Natural Disasters
Human Error
Hardware Failure
Software Failure

31. Continuity & Technology
 How do you calculate the cost of this to your
business?
 Add:
 Employee Productivity
 Cost of Restoration
 Sales Lost
 Reputational Cost
 Online calculator available

32. Continuity & Technology
 Prevention is better than cure!
 Most downtime could be avoided
- Prevent – Apply Best Practice & Maintain
- Plan – Projects, Resources & Finances

33. Continuity & Technology
 Action Point’s methodology
1. Identify the Risks
2. Address the Risks
3. Document
4. Test

34. 1. Identify the Risks
 Technology Stack
Applications
Services
Data Backup
Operating Systems
DR & BC
Virtualisation
Server Hardware
Telephony
Active Network
Physical Network
External Network
Power
Environment
Physical Security Access Control System
Data Backup to Offsite Location
VMWare or HyperV
Dell PowerEdge Servers & EqualLogic Storage
Phone System, Handsets & Headsets
UPS, Generator
Air Conditioning / General Location
Business Applications, Databases, Services
Cabling & Patching
Dell PowerConnect Switches
Data Replication System (to Secondary Site)
Microsoft Windows Server
Microsft Exchange, Office Applications, SQL, File, Print Queues
Internet / WAN / Firewalls / Interbuilding Links

35. 1. Identify the Risks
 Identify and catalogue the risks
 Catalogue the application services
 Are any pro-active maintenance routines needed?
 Establish the RTO & RPO of each
 This information dictates the minimum
requirements for protection:
 Is Backup sufficient?
 Is Continuity required?

36. 2. Address the Risks
 Bring existing systems in line with Best Practice
 Introduce Resilience where required
 Install software systems and hardware systems
as needed
 Update maintenance routines to ensure systems
are kept operational and that potential issues are
pre-empted.
 Employ pro-active monitoring of key services.

37. 3. Document the Plan
 Document:
 Infrastructure
 Maintenance routines
 Procedures for Fail-over
 Keep it updated

38. 4. Test, Test & Re-Test
Test!!!
 Your plan is only as good as the last test

39. Client Case Study: VoxPro
 Client since September 2010
 Have grown from 100 to 400 staff
 Core Systems based on Dell Infrastructure
 Implementation Services from Action Point

40. Client Case Study: Chill Insurance
 Client since October 2010
 Have grown from 40 to 200+ staff
 Core Systems based on Dell Infrastructure
 Implementation Services from Action Point