Business Continuity Strategy

Best Practices in implementing your payroll business continuity strategy.
 

1. Determine the scope of your plan.
   The key to building a disaster-proof disaster recovery plan is to understand what you are planning for. Understand the data, where it resides and how important each piece is. Then identify the processes and responsibilities associated with protecting and recovering that data.
    
2. Assess the risks.
   Business-critical data should be handled with a higher security level than less important data. Perform a risk analysis of the entire data backup process to identify any problems.
    
3. Develop a comprehensive data protection and recovery program.
   Create a strategy for protecting data against loss and restoring it when necessary with the desired Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO). Build security into the process, lest the data end up in the wrong hands. Does your current backup and recovery procedures need updating?
   
   Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is how much data is acceptable to be irretrievably lost. Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is the time required to bring a system back up. When the above requirements have been determined, break it down into what you need and where your gaps are today.
    
4. Implement the program.
   Communicate your data disaster recovery policies and procedures. Make sure everyone understands why data protection is important and what is at stake. Set correct expectations.
    
5. Manage and enforce.
   Keep the program current, automate wherever possible, and make sure employees are continually reminded of their responsibilities. Make it second nature. Be sure that everyone understands their role in a disaster. A disaster recovery plan is only useful if it is communicated and understood.
    
6. Audit and test periodically.
   Test the process once it is in place. Use people who are less informed – so they are ready to jump in if the expert is not around when a disaster hits. And update the plan where necessary.