The following is by Gary Rossell
Vital records are the records that contain information critical
to the continuation or survival of your company during or
immediately following a crisis. They can be paper records, database
records, email with attachments, voicemail, instant messages, or
any other official record documenting company business. Proper
protection of these records starts with proper planning.
One: Designate a Vital Records Programme “Owner”
For your vital records programme to succeed there must be one
individual accountable for planning and maintaining the programme.
The business continuity or records manager are likely candidates
due to their involvement with records programmes or business
continuity planning. You also need a clear definition of
responsibilities between records management, business continuity,
risk management, and emergency preparedness.
Two: Assess Your Current Vital Record Programme
The next step is to determine what (if any) vital records or
risk assessment programmes already exist within the organisation.
If these programs do exist, examine how much of this work can be
leveraged for a comprehensive vital records programme. Typical
departments to consider are:
- Records management – they may have vital
record classes identified.
- Business continuity – they may have
criticality assigned to business functions from a Business Impact
Analysis.
- Risk management – they may have rated company
business function loss.
- Emergency preparedness – they may have
specified an order to re-establish company business functions.
If you currently do not have any relevant programmes, you will
need to complete a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) of the company
business functions. Your BIA will give you a recovery priority
rating that is a key component for aligning business function
recovery priorities with vital records priorities.
Three: Identify and Assess Vital Records
Conduct surveys of business functions to document business
function records, and collect information to identify and assess
vital records. The following three risk categories should be
included in the assessment survey:
- Probability of loss or damage.
- Recovery priority analysis (from the business impact
analysis).
- Financial or time impact of loss or damage.
Next, the responses for each risk category should be rolled up
into an overall risk rating for each vital record. Your plan will
include all records, but of course scarce resources should be
allocated to the highest risk records first.
Four: Create an initial plan to protect and recover your vital
records
Build your initial vital records recovery plan with the
following in mind:
- Include high-ranked vital records in the business continuity
plan and provide for their quick and easy access.
- Develop a protection plan with record owners for records that
are not on the short-term risk reduction list.
- Include a corporate compliance/governance summary for corporate
compliance use.
- Coordinate the vital record programme with the business
continuity plan.
- Develop training and rollout plans including a policy and
procedure document.
- Obtain approval for the plan to reduce vital record risk.
- Include external processes like e-commerce, voice mail, or web
hosting in your plan.
- Include vital records protection within existing security,
records management, and recovery processes when possible.
Five: Maintain and Update Your Vital Records Plan
Vital records are dynamic and change with the business, so your
vital records plan needs to be updated on a regular basis. Keep
your plan up to date by remembering to:
- Include vital record recovery and reconstruction in your
business continuity plan exercises.
- Plan and fund continuous risk reduction for vital records.
- Include vital records in new application development
processes.
- Update vital records risk at a minimum of every two years.
- Train new employees and managers responsible for vital
records.
- Produce an annual compliance report for vital records.
- Encourage internal audits to ensure compliance with the vital
record programme.
Summary
Vital records are essential for the recovery of any business. If
you follow this pragmatic approach, a disaster doesn't have to mean
you can't quickly recover the most vital records you need to keep
your business running.
This article was adopted from Business Continuity Relies on
Records, by Gary Rossell, a senior consultant with Iron Mountain.
Iron Mountain will be exhibiting at the Business Continuity Expo
and Conference held at EXCEL Docklands.
