Business Continuity in the Distributed Environment

INTRODUCTION Today’s organizations, in their efforts to reduce costs, are streamlining layers of management while implementing more complex matrices of control and reporting. Distributed systems have facilitated the reshaping of these organizations by moving the control of information closer to its source — the end user. In this transition, however, secure management of that information is placed at risk. Information Technology (IT) departments must protect the traditional system environment within the computer room, plus develop policies, standards, and guidelines for the security and the protection of the company’s information base. Further, the IT staff must communicate these standards to all users to enforce a strong baseline of controls. In these distributed environments, IT personnel are often asked to develop system recovery plans outside the context of an overall business recovery scheme. Recoverability of systems, however, should be viewed as only one part of business recovery. Information Systems (IS), in and of itself, is not the lifeblood of a company; inventory, assets, processes, and people are all essential factors that must be considered in the business continuation design. The success of business continuity planning rests on a company’s ability to integrate systems recovery in the greater overall planning effort. P A Y O F F I D E A