Every year, as the Atlantic hurricane season approaches, many businesses realize they are at risk from a catastrophic event called “Black Swan.” Black Swan events are a constant source of risk in states like Florida, where many communities are subject to disruption from coastal storms. This risk is particularly acute for businesses that rely on online data storage if there is a chance that their critical data may be lost or damaged. But the threat of Black Swan events is not limited to Florida, nor is it limited to large-scale disruptive events like hurricanes, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. The term is based on an old saying that assumed black swans did not exist, but the saying was rewritten after black swans were discovered in the wild. Consider the following scenario…
“We tend to think of disasters in terms of the attacks on the World Trade Center, Hurricane Katrina, or other mega-events. Sometimes, however, less remarkable events occur that can have a catastrophic effect on a business. In February 1981, a electrical wiring The basement fire in the State Office Building in Binghamton, New York spread throughout the building’s basement, igniting a transformer containing over a thousand gallons of toxin-laden oil.Originally thought to be PCBs, but it was soon determined that the toxins contained dioxin and dibenzofuran, two of the most dangerous chemicals ever created.The fire was smoky and quickly filled the 18-story building with smoke.As the transformer burned, soot entered the exhaust ducts. building ventilation and quickly spread toxic soot throughout the building.The building was so contaminated that it took 13 years and more than $47 million to clean it up. remove it before the building could be re-entered or used. and its contents, including all paper records, computers, and personal effects of the people who worked there, were not recoverable. This type of event would be unrecoverable for many companies.” – Operations Due Diligence, published by McGraw Hill
What effect would a catastrophic hurricane that affected an entire region or a localized disruptive event like a fire have on your business operation? Could you survive that kind of interruption or loss? As reliance on online data has grown in virtually all types of businesses, so has the risk that losing your data could disrupt the business and even cause it to fail altogether. In response to these threats, there has been an evolution in the approaches used to mitigate these risks as the volume of data online has continued to grow. Originally, the concept of disaster recovery (DR) emerged as a mitigation strategy that focused on recovering critical data after a disruptive event by giving the business the ability to restore interrupted IT operations.
Disaster recovery (DR) involves a set of policies and procedures that enable the restoration of critical business data and allows the IT infrastructure to be restored to a previous state. DR was originally seen as the domain of the IT department that was given the responsibility of mitigating risk. To minimize risk, system backups were frequently scheduled and aggressive DR plans were put in place that included server cold start procedures and data backups.
The goal was to restore the infrastructure to the point where the data was last backed up (at that time, typically to tape). Acceptable DR practices at the time allowed the IT system to reboot when power to the facility was finally restored… Unless it was in a flood zone or the off-site backup storage facility had also gone down. been affected. In either case, the operation of the installation could be interrupted for a period of time and data restoration could also be at risk depending on where the backups were stored.
Now moving forward on the calendar… As technology evolved, so did disaster recovery strategies, leading to new concepts that evolved into the requirements for a business continuity solution as a means of mitigating risk. Still seen as the domain of IT, as technology advanced towards solutions like shadow servers, distributed data locations, and high-speed mass data transmission with hyper-connectivity. Data no longer had to be “retrieved”, it just had to be connected in distributed locations where it could be accessed remotely. Business Continuity mitigated the risk of data loss and allowed a business to recover much faster and more efficiently from a Black Swan event because its servers never failed completely.
Business Continuity originally encompassed the planning and preparation to ensure that an organization’s IT infrastructure remained intact, allowing the business to efficiently recover to an operational state within a reasonably short period of time after a Black Swan event. Today’s technology has evolved towards cloud solutions that put both data and applications in remote “cloud” locations, so it seems that IT’s responsibility to mitigate the risk of online data loss or corruption has been resolved. . With fully distributed and highly connected solutions, some people feel that the need for business continuity may be fading. Could not be farther from the truth…
The fact is that the risk was never solely in the loss of data, but in the loss of the commercial ability to operate. There are businesses that cannot tolerate any interruption in their operations. These include healthcare, insurance and communications companies, critical logistics providers, transportation providers and local governments. It is during Black Swan events that the services and products offered by these companies may be most needed. The requirements of other less critical businesses, whose operations could be disrupted for days or even weeks, but which could face significant financial risk, can also make their continued operation a matter of corporate survival.
Today’s technology has completely abstracted business processing and user data by moving critical IT infrastructures to the cloud. Cloud technology allows users to work from remote locations, but using the cloud does not fully mitigate operational risk. It means that people have now replaced computers as the critical path for continuous operations. Business operations are more likely to be disrupted because key personnel are not prepared to maintain operations during a Black Swan event. They don’t have a facility that has been proactively planned to support operations during disruptive events that could last hours, days, or weeks. Particularly in areas like Florida, where major natural disasters like hurricanes can disrupt services to entire communities, resilient businesses must prepare ahead of time for sustained operations during a disruptive event. The ability of a company to continue its operations during times of distress is a measure of the companies’ resilience.
Business Resilience: Take business continuity to another level by making it the domain of operations management instead of just the domain of IT. When planning for disaster recovery or business continuity, the critical link now is the people needed to operate critical systems remotely. Yes, there are times when staff can work from home or from remote facilities that the company can operate, however this is not always a satisfactory answer and even when it is, companies often find themselves struggling to catch up. , trying to find out who. does what and “how can we do it in these circumstances” situations. During Black Swan events, including regional outages like hurricanes or local outages like fires, many of the people the business relies on may not have the power, internet, or even a phone they need to be able to work from home. Because you can’t put people in the cloud, Business Resiliency requires planning, training, and practice so your people know how and when to mobilize.
Resilient businesses embed the Black Swan response into their ongoing operations so that when they are needed, at a time when the business and people are under stress, everyone knows how to respond efficiently and effectively and where to go to provide that response. . Business resiliency requires a dedicated facility that has been hardened to withstand Black Swan events and designed to provide the support services that people and IT infrastructure will need. Business resilience requires proactive planning and integration of operating procedures into companies’ standard operating plans to include remote operations by trained critical personnel who have been mobilized to respond during disruptive events and requires proactive practice to ensure that, when they need remote operations, the people are ready.
