Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity - A Developing Field

The concept of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery as a part of the ongoing business process is of fairly recent origin. Though in the earlier times the critical sites and plants in sectors like power generation, nuclear power plants etc did maintain crisis management plans as a part of the security drill, the modern day Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity plans have come of age chiefly due to the evolution of technology and service sectors that rely heavily on technology.

IT data and systems security as well as data recovery occupies a prime position in IT solutions. With the probabilities of failure due to several factors inherent in technology network and systems as well as the risks or threats faced from external or natural sources, IT companies have had to take preventive measures in the form of drawing up Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity plans.

Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity Plans can be easily drawn up by any Organization internally, if the right talent and resource is available to draw from experience of all employees and draw up a plan imaginatively covering all possibilities of disruption and risks. A good plan will include inputs from those who are working in the organization and who know their processes well.

As a part of the Disaster Recovery solution, the Organization may wish to involve outside vendors and third party DR Service providers. One can access DR & BC templates and draft plans from internet or from different government departs like security, fire department etc. The second alternative would be to purchase a DR/BC Plan available on the internet.

Since Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity planning, implementation and maintenance is an ongoing process, it helps the Organizations to send their employees for training and certification. There are a few institutes namely the BCI - Business Continuity Institute in UK, DR International in Virginia, USA which are non-profit organizations and offer training and certifications at various levels. Besides these, several universities, associations and commercial training institutes too offer DR & BC training and certifications. Consultancy firms like Sentryx, Survive, Institute for Business continuity training & BCM Academy etc offer consultancy as well as training and certification programs.

In the recent times, managements are waking up to and realizing the need for risk management and accordingly are providing for investments and budget to maintain DR & BC plans on ongoing basis.

With the evolution of technology, companies are required to continually invest huge sums in IT systems and hence the need to anticipate, plan and mitigate risks. This being a growing field, offers a huge scope for IT professionals, Management students and others to go for certification and build career as Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity Consultants.

Even the middle management executives with relevant work experience can look to building an alternate career as Consultants with DR & BC certification backed with experience.

As more and more businesses go global and technology continues to evolve, the need for DR & BC consultants and experts is likely to keep growing all over the world. The consultants would need to keep themselves updated with technology as well as maintain lead in developing Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity Plans to suit the changing environment.

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