Where business continuity planning starts Many CIOs ask where and when should their companies start to build a sound business continuity strategy?
The answer is that it is imperative that each unit within the organization lists the core resources needed to continue to operate in a productive manner following equipment failure, a loss of power, data, etc, any tangible point of risk within their department. It is also important to outline how quickly these resources need to be brought back online to prevent disruption. Then, based on these criteria, the IT department should draw up the core elements of its business continuity strategy. Although the particulars will differ from company to company, they should all ensure that the recovery time objective (RTO: how long you have to recover the data or system before its absence causes business continuity problems) is equal to or shorter than the maximum tolerable outage (MTO). If the RTO is longer than the MTO then business continuity is not ensured and the business is still at risk. The recovery point objective (RPO: how much data the organization can afford to lose or re-create) is al