The best recovery plans in the world would be of no use if the organization was unable to access them promptly during an outage. Following a few simple tips can ensure that your organization can get its hands on its recovery plans when it matters most.

[Related on BCMMetrics: The Write Stuff: How to Create
and Maintain Business Continuity Documentation]

The Importance of BC Document Accessibility

Having an elegant business continuity (BC) document storage solution is certainly a very nice thing for any organization. It’s also far down the list of program elements a company should focus on when it comes to improving its resilience. 

Many things are more important, including identifying your critical business processes, developing recovery strategies and plans, closing any gaps between the needs of the business and the capabilities of the IT department, and validating your plans through realistic exercises.

That said, if your documents are to do their job, they need to be readily accessible, even during an outage. Make that: especially during an outage. 

The inability of the intended users to access BC plans quickly is a sure-fire way to slow recovery and increase the impact of an event.

Imagine a homeowner who buys a fire-escape ladder for every upstairs bedroom and then stores them in the garage. The organization that creates a set of recovery plans and puts them where no one can access them when it matters is doing much the same thing.

7 Essential Tips for Storing BC Documents

Here are a few tips to help you ensure you can access your recovery plans when you need them.

Store your plans somewhere where your IT team will not under any circumstances have to perform a recovery to make them available. 

If your IT team has to execute a recovery before you can begin getting the business back up, you are behind from the start. (A hard copy of your plan satisfies this need but can be vulnerable in other ways, such as in the event of a facility outage. Hard copies must also be re-printed when plans are updated.)

Store a copy of your plans in a location other than on your operational system. 

When will you really need your recovery plans? When your operational system goes down. So expecting people to access their plans through that system is a bad idea. This applies even to cloud-based solutions like Microsoft 365 or Google Drive, which could become inaccessible during a system outage.

Store a copy of your plans off-site.

Store a copy of your plans in a place entirely separate from your location, physically and digitally. The storage site should be beyond the reach of any vicissitudes that might affect your facility and systems.

Make sure the people who need to use the plans have the credentials and knowledge required to locate and access them. 

Tightly controlling access is critical for network security but can pose issues in terms of people’s being able to swiftly access recovery documents during an event.

Organize your documents in a way that makes sense for your company. 

Your folder structure could be set up by function, location, or a combination of both.

Consider using a BC document storage solution. 

There are many excellent products available for storing and quickly accessing BC documents. BCMMetrics’ BCM One provides secure, off-site, and accessible BC document storage independent of customers’ operational systems. It also allows customers to see their facilities on the map and access their stored documents by location with a few clicks.

Test your storage solution before you need it.

However and wherever you store your recovery documents, test your setup before you need it to ensure that the right people can access the needed documents in a timely manner, even when your operational system is down and your facility inaccessible.

By following these tips, you can ensure that your recovery plans will be accessible when they matter most—during a disruption.

Making Sure Your Plans Are Ready When You Need Them

Business continuity documents are only as useful as they are accessible. If your recovery plans are locked away in a system that goes down with your operations, they won’t be able to fulfill their purpose.