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Businesses and organizations large and small can be prepared to mitigate events that threaten their operations and people by creating a simple plan.  This strategic plan should include a philosophy of teamwork and collaboration, leading to service excellence.

The National Response Plan (NRP) covers the full range of complex and constantly changing requirements in anticipation of or in response to threats or acts of terrorism, major disasters, and other emergencies. The NRP also provides the basis to initiate long-term community recovery and mitigation activities.

Private-sector owners and operators, particularly those who represent critical elements of infrastructure or key resources whose disruption may have national or major regional impact, are encouraged (or in some cases required under law) to develop appropriate emergency response and business continuity plans and information-sharing and incident-reporting protocols that are tailored to the unique requirements of their respective sector or industry, and that clearly map to regional, State, and local emergency response plans and information-sharing networks.

The NRP recognizes 8 areas of catastrophic potential:

16 Acts of God- earthquakes, fires, floods, lightning strikes, landslides, heat waves, storms, drought, cold waves, volcanic activity, tornadoes, tsunamis, hurricanes, cyclones, insect swarms

Biological Incidents-Pandemics-acts of God

Food and Agriculture Incidents-mad cow disease

Nuclear/Radiological Incidents

Oil and Hazardous Materials Incidents

Terrorism Incidents- bombings, kidnappings, armed attacks, assassinations, arsons, firebombings, hijacking

Cyber Incidents- form of terrorism

Civil unrest

Develop and publish detailed operational procedures.  Identify appropriate assets and establish agreements and procedures for their rapid deployment.  Designate representatives, develop appropriate training programs and make lists of organizations that will provide ping, power and pipe, appropriate cleaning and recovery services and any other activities required for resumption of normal business operations (NBO). 

Eliminate any event that is unlikely for your areas, such as hurricanes on the West Coast.

Here’s a scenario of a prepared business continuance effort after a pandemic, H1N1 flu outbreak:

From the command center at IS West, the CEO’s home office, redundant systems and online backups insure that the organization continues operations during the catastrophic incident.  International health rules require that all employees stay at their homes and that all physical businesses with the exception of those vital to health and safety, be closed.  Maintaining client websites, producing contract work on time and providing a safe working environment for the team requires access to all applications and data from anywhere, through secure connections, to an offsite, colocated facility.   VOIP programs insure communications remain active even if cell phones are overloaded and inoperable.  Redundant Internet connections, cable, DSL and satellite, insures connectivity to the colocation and other team members remains active.  IS West now becomes a resource for information on the pandemic and to reach others to assist the communities around the home based team members.  Assisting thousands of clients in these same areas exhibits service excellence and connecting with pre-determined local disaster agencies such as police, emergency operations or Homeland security, assists in the business continuance efforts for individuals and organizations. 

The DR plan for IS West includes data and applications backups to a centralized, hardened data center.  Data and applications can be accessed from any laptop or PC from anywhere with an Internet connection, with the proper credentials.   

Through their local IT services partners, Lanspeed and Ecotec, IS West is able to help themselves and others around them by providing what they do best, access to information and connecting people and organizations to help move forward during an incident.  The services become more mission critical as the pandemic continues into weeks of inability to reach out to physical offices or to utilize transportation systems. 

Steady-state preparedness or readiness activities conducted in the absence of a specific threat or hazard are essential to successful catastrophic incident response

Top priorities for incident management are to:  Save lives and protect the health and safety of the public, responders, and recovery workers; Ensure security of the homeland;  Prevent an imminent incident, including acts of terrorism, from occurring; Protect and restore critical infrastructure and key resources; Conduct law enforcement investigations to resolve the incident, apprehend the perpetrators, and collect and preserve evidence for prosecution and/or attribution;  Protect property and mitigate damages and impacts to individuals, communities, and the environment; and facilitate recovery of individuals, families, businesses, governments, and the environment.

Private-sector organizations may be affected by direct or indirect consequences of the incident, including privately owned critical infrastructure, key resources, and those main private-sector organizations that are significant to local, regional, and national economic recovery from the incident. Examples of privately owned infrastructure include transportation, telecommunications, private utilities, financial institutions, and hospitals. Private-sector organizations provide response resources (donated or compensated) during an incident—including specialized teams, equipment, and advanced technologies —through local public-private emergency plans, mutual aid agreements, or incident specific requests from government and private-sector-volunteered initiatives.

Does your business have a service or product that could be used to help recovery after a catastrophic event?  Fire Extinguisher or medical products or pharmaceutical companies can distribute their products on a reduced fee or free basis, with agreements reached prior to the incident with state and local officials. 

As a member of the Department of Homeland Security Lessons Learned program, Ecotec can help your organization create an effective Incident Response Plan. 

About IS West

ISWest offers enterprise class high speed Internet access, Server Colocation, Managed Server solutions, Web and Email Hosting, and a full range of Firewall/VPN security services to small and medium sized growing businesses in Southern California.

ISWest's core philosophy of "People Wrapped around Technology" creates a superior customer experience that powers our company's continued growth and success. We are a results-oriented organization known for providing "Non-Stop Internet, Non-Stop Support, Non-Stop People" through our dedicated employees and exceptional products and services, leading to total customer satisfaction, guaranteed. They can be reached at 877-735-1500, www.iswest.com

About Ecotec

Offering IT services in the Ventura County and Southern California area, Ecotec offers assessment services with certified IT professionals and has partnerships with the best of breed providers in the area.  Call us at 805-491-0363 or visit our website at www.myecotec.com.