Welcome to our Firm Issues Q2

February 2007

:: Dealing with a disaster

:: It's all in the plan, right?

:: An ounce of prevention

:: The Who, What, When, Where

:: Communication is Critical

:: People first

:: Practice makes perfect

:: Portrait of a tornado disaster

:: Now for the equipment...

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Dealing with a disaster

There are three phases when dealing with a catastrophe: preparedness, response, and recovery.

Preparedness should be considered from three angles: the first being identification of serious risks, second, prevention, and the third being mitigation or a lessening of the impact of the damages.

Your response should be governed by a thoughtful and practical plan to take stock of the situation and deal with it with a methodical approach that will reduce the ensuing down time.

Preparing such a plan is the focus of this month’s newsletter.

Getting started check list

An ounce of prevention

The best way to deal with a disaster is to avoid having it in the first place.

Risk assessment should be in the context of preserving key business functions, processes and records.

Consider how fire, flood, severe weather or man made disasters could affect your business. Make sure you have adequate safety equipment – fire extinguishers, smoke detectors, etc. - and that’s it’s checked frequently to assure it’s in good working order.

Don’t forget that a threat to your business is defined as any event that denies you the use of your normal work area or the telecommunications connectivity to do your work. That being said, just because you don’t live on a hurricane prone island, you’re not safe from disasters. Widen the scope of your thinking to include accidents, armed conflict, bio-medical outbreaks, hackers, sabotage, human error, and now terrorism, to name a few.

Communication is Critical

Right off the bat, you need to consider the fact that your Disaster Recovery Administrator may not be available. You need to appoint a second, and maybe a third, pinch hitter to act in their place. If the choice of alternative administrators is a hurdle, "Congratulations! You've just identified your first disaster plan challenge".

Make sure each person at all plan management levels has access to offsite disaster recovery plans and the systems they need to work on.

Remember that your people are your most important resource; your communication should not end with contacting the designated disaster team members. Make sure you have a plan in place to keep your employees in the loop. Let them know what’s happened, how it’s being handled, and how the events may affect their jobs. If you don’t, you may find you’ve lost your work force by the time you’re stabilized and ready to resume normal operations.

Use teleconferencing or video conferencing to maximize your efficiency. If the cell network is overloaded, use text messaging.

As the critical emergency situation resolves is resolved and you go into a ‘business as usual’ mode, have a strategy that expands to cover an expanding circle of your strategic partners, i.e., your suppliers.

People first

The first order of business is to assure that you have a well-understood and practiced evacuation plan. In the event of a catastrophic event, everybody must know how to leave the building and where to meet so that everyone can be accounted for. This location should be a short walking distance from the building, but far enough away for safety.

Part of this plan should be a defined list of responsibilities and the individuals assigned to them. Since you’re contemplating a disaster scenario, you should designate at least one, if not multiple, layers of personnel that can provide back-up if others are not available or incapacitated.

Make sure your plans cover you in the event that you are unable to access your premises.

Practice makes perfect

That’s the reason that we still have fire drills!

You absolutely MUST train your employees, test your planning, and be prepared to make adjustments.

Your plan is worthless unless your team players buy into it. A plan-testing and maintenance program should be designed to spot gaps between the plan and your perceived implementation of it. If there is any disconnect between your perception and the rest of the team members, this is the time to examine it.

A case study in point: the employer envisions that a satellite site thirty miles away can be set up within 72 hours. The result: oops! 60% of the staff members are single parents and couldn’t possibly meet that time frame.

Your plan is a dynamic document designed to be revised or even re-written every few years. Rewrites should be based on a strategy of refinement of requirements, with an eye to exploiting new technology and bringing a fresh approach to old problems. The idea is to get started, test, train, and stay flexible.

Portrait of a tornado disaster

Recently one of our Indianapolis clients experienced a series of tornados that threatened their workplace and systems. We were there to help. Here's an excerpt from the thank you letter we received.

"Again thank you so much for the assistance you and your company gave us. Because of your help, we will get through this month and be able to hit the road running when we get back into our building. If you hadn't worked so hard getting us back into Solaria (the name of their 35-story office building), we would be a month or more behind on entries.....months' worth of data entry. You never know how much you depend on the software you are using until you lose access to it."

Mark A Thompson ClearPoint Legal

Thanks for the kind words, Mark. We were glad to be able to help.

It's all in the plan, right?

If you’ve read this far, you must be convinced that disaster planning is not optional; you simply must factor it into developing your business. So, you ask, “Where to I start?”

Here’s an outline of the responses you need to be able to support in the event of a disaster condition. By creating a strategy to deal with each, you’re plan will come together in a series of logical steps.

1. First, start by defining the scope of the detected problem. Is your primary challenge to deal with a loss of information, a loss or access, or a loss of personnel?

2. Once you’re in a position to clearly define the situation you’re facing, it’s time to notify the people you have pre-selected to be on your critical recovery plan team.

3. Now that you’ve communicated with your management and staff members, you need to implement your plan to maintain the best level of service possible to your customers and the public.

4. Designate a site for your recovery operations - a base of operations. Ideally this site will be one of the locations that hold your daily back-up files.

5. Have a plan to disseminate any public information that is necessary and appropriate. Remember that members of the public are also your potential clients and customers. Have a draft emergency press release prepared in advance to be able to promptly reassure the community that, notwithstanding the immediate challenges, you are in control and have contingency plans in effect to survive, stabilize and move forward.

With these fundamental planning pillars in place, you have the foundation for the development of your plan.

The Who, What, When, Where

Essentially your plan should be designed to addresses the 'who, what, when, where and why' of stabilizing your business after the disaster event.

The ‘who’ refers to your disaster teams. Depending on the size of your business, you may have an Emergency Management Team as the leader of the recovery efforts, with sub-teams which might include telecommunications and IT, power and facilities, public and customer relations, accounting, and human resources.

The ’what’ is a clear, comprehensive, and focused business continuity and recovery plan that provides a road map to minimizing your business interruption.   Make sure the people involved know what they need to do and what decisions they should make under the pressure of the moment.  Some options, authority limits, and rules may need to be bent depending on circumstances; it's up to you to foresee those in advance.

Of utmost importance is that team members have the authority and comfort level to make the decisions necessary to deal with challenges as they arise.  Don’t allow management approval constraints to bog the recovery down.

‘When’ is, of course, probably the time you least expect it. Hackers, hurricanes and epidemics don’t follow our agenda. While you can’t control this ‘when’, you can control the ‘when’ that deals with the implementation of each of the steps, by priority, in your disaster plan.

‘Where’ is your company facilities, including any alternate sites, including the ability to communicate with your employees.  Effective deployment of your work force is the fundamental requirement for recovery.

Finally, ‘why’ is to minimize disruption, maximize continuity, and preserve your company’s assets.

Now for the equipment...

Once the people are safe, the next priority is your technology, both hardware and software, and your paper systems.

Historically, the data processing function alone was assigned key responsibility for contingency planning. Unfortunately this often resulted in the development of recovery plans that were not responsive to the needs of the users. Contingency planning should be seen as a big picture business issue, not a data processing issue. Thus the development of a viable recovery strategy be a product not just of the data processing provider, communications and center services, but also the users of those services. Not to be lost in the mix, the needs of management personnel, responsible for the protection of the organization’s assets, must be considered.

Even in a ‘fully automated’ operation, there will be vulnerable records: ‘pending’ contracts, research, transcripts, video tapes, and CDs.  Do you have a copy, in electronic or paper form, of every form you use in the management and administration of your business? In most offices the accounting and deposition calendar software is the most critical. You need to be able to confirm jobs, track orders and reporter worksheets, and continue receiving and making payments for your work.  
 
There are many other paper and electronic "systems" in your office that you may not have considered. Determine what systems or data are critical.  Remember, data back-ups will not be enough if you cannot restore the application quickly along with it. 

Take a couple minutes and watch each of your departments work and you'll see processes that they require to function at a basic level. Some of these include

•Fax - many clients still fax notices in. How will you receive faxes if you cannot get into your office?

•Email - do your reporters email jobs and worksheets? Do you have an external email account you can use if your server is down?

•Transcripts and Exhibits - How will you function if your files are no longer available on your network?  While most contemporary office operations are largely paperless, what is your plan to preserve and protect any original transcripts and other deposition documents in your safekeeping?

•Client and Reporter repository - it's great having your attorneys and reporters access their schedules and files online, but if you host your own site and your system breaks, how will they retrieve their information?  For example, do you have remote administration to your key servers?  In the event that you cannot gain access to your building, make sure your key machines can be accessed remotely.

Each office has its own needs... these are some we've seen. Find out what yours are and find out how you can protect them below.