Mitigation and Business Continuity

Mitigation in business continuity is the attempt to reduce the likelihood of a potential disruption of a critical resource or having had the resource disrupted, reducing the negative impact of the disruption on your operations.

Critical resources are found in four general categories:

• People- The folks who run the business
• Facilities- Where the business is done
• Information- Data the business needs
• Assets- Equipment and supplies the business needs

If any of these four resources are disrupted, the business operations will be disrupted. Mitigation steps can help to reduce the likelihood of the disruption and reduce the impact of the disruption to the rest of the business, if it occurs.

Disruption doesn’t need to be anything as large as a regional earthquake. It could be a round of flu that has your staffing levels seriously depleted due to employee illness.

Some common mitigation steps:

• Cross-train employees to fill in for absent employees
• Store data back-ups off-site
• Store vital records off-site
• Make sure your data-server room has an appropriate fire suppression system (NOT water).
• Develop alternate facilities plans in case you have to move
• Store heavy items on lower shelves
• Mount bookcases, cabinets, etc to walls
• Mount wall art securely so it doesn’t come off the wall
• Secure breakables with museum putty
• Consider swapping older, heavier CRT-style monitors for smaller, lighter LCD ones.
• Strap down computers and other electronics so they will not fall during an earthquake.
• At home: know how to turn off your utilities if needed.
• At home: strap down the water heater or convert to a tank-less water heater.

How to justify mitigation? Consider this: according to a 2006 presentation by the Houston Area Research Center (HARC), every one dollar spent in mitigation saves seven dollars in recovery.