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The outbreak of SARS in Asia in 2003 and the threat of a human-communicable version of avian influenza have forced enterprises to consider a new type of disaster ? epidemics affecting wide geographical areas for extended periods.
Tragically, the danger of pandemics was graphically illustrated in the early 20th century, when the Spanish influenza outbreak infected about 20% of the worldwide population and resulted in over 50 million deaths. The Asian flu pandemic of 1957 killed 69,000 in the United States alone, despite the availability of vaccines. Yet, looking ahead, there is not yet a commercially available vaccine to protect humans against avian flu. The World Health Organization projects potential fatalities from an avian flu pandemic to exceed two million worldwide, even in their "conservative" planning scenario.
Should such an outbreak occur in the near future, government bodies and health organizations will impose quarantines, restrictions on travel, and drastic limitations on people congregating in public places.
So, while most business continuity and disaster recovery planning before 2003 focused on protecting data and providing extra capacity to cope with a sudden loss of infrastructure, planners must now prepare for scenarios where infrastructure remains intact, but workers are unable to congregate in offices, or even leave their homes, for weeks or months at a time.
Endpoint Security and Connectivity
Enterprises must plan to provide secure, reliable connectivity and access to corporate networks for employees who are suddenly forced to work in their homes, hotels, or other remote locations.
Administrators must plan for distributing software to remote computers, for ensuring security on computers outside of the corporate firewall, and for providing backup and data encryption capabilities to mitigate the risk of mobile devices with sensitive data being lost or stolen.
Collaboration and Re-Engineered Processes
Planners must prepare for ways to re-engineer business processes so they can continue without face-to-face interaction between employees. This might include providing employees with collaboration tools, modifying business applications to automate processes that had been handled by informal and "sneaker-net" methods, and introducing workflow and project management tools that help managers control processes across multiple locations.
Enterprises must also anticipate a dramatic increase in requests for technical support and questions for Human Resources and other groups who provide information and support for employees working under unfamiliar conditions.
This paper will discuss procedures to address these challenges in three areas:
- Planning, testing, and preparation.
- Supporting employees and remote computers.
- Preparing IT, support, and the office infrastructure.
1. Planning, Testing and Preparation
While standard methodologies for business continuity and disaster recovery planning can be applied to all types of emergencies, experts suggest a number of variations related to the specific challenges created by pandemics.
Explore a variety of scenarios
Enterprises should explore a variety of pandemic scenarios. These might start with a low-level threat affecting a circumscribed geographic region, and range up to a widespread pandemic with severe government-imposed restrictions on travel. The number of employees affected, the reactions of medical and governmental organizations, and the behavior of customers and suppliers should be examined across these scenarios.
Identify key processes and individuals
Not every business process can be re-established immediately after a crisis. Therefore it is important to identify which processes are critical and must continue with minimum interruption and maximum efficiency, and which processes that can afford some interruption and temporary inefficiencies. This analysis will also help identify which individuals should be given first priority for reconnection and support.
Examine endpoint security, connectivity and productivity
In the event of a pandemic, enterprises will need to turn office workers into remote and mobile workers rapidly and in large numbers. This poses major challenges in the area of endpoint security, connectivity, productivity and end user support. The planning team will need to understand thoroughly how these challenges apply to their environment, then develop policies and technical solutions to address them. These topics are discussed in the next section of this white paper.
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