For SME companies, unplanned events of any nature can lead to devastating consequences. Your IT infrastructure is central to your operations and unexpected system downtime will begin to affect your productivity immediately but BCP and DR also encompass many other aspects of your business.

Our experience in business continuity planning and disaster recovery planning will help prevent the loss of a key customer or maybe your entire business and our testing schedules for BCP and DRP will ensure that your emergency procedures are reviewed regularly.

From disasters such as fire and flood to IT system failure and the sudden illness of key members of staff, there are countless potential risks to business which need to be anticipated. Prosyn has helped many small to medium-sized firms identify threats to their operations and plan to minimise the impact of these crises.

Prosyn will help define the steps that would ensure your business continues to function in the event of a disaster and maybe even prevent it happening in the first place. Then we will document our recommendations, test the plan rigorously by working through various hypothetical scenarios and keep your procedures under constant review.

Disaster recovery (DR)

If business continuity planning (BCP) is concerned, at least in part, with prevention and limiting the damage, disaster recovery (DR) is very much about the course of action which must be taken when a disaster has occurred.

Disasters are a fact and recovery needs to be planned for. A Prosyn DR Plan encompasses all elements of your business. We review the functionality of key staff members and assess what options you require to effectively support your clients should a DR event occur. This plan includes computer contingencies, client and supplier listings, contact details for emergency providers of gas, power and other building services and other operational functions.

Prosyn has developed a complete range of DR solutions focused on providing the most flexible and cost effective service possible, keeping sight of your budget and the complexity of your business. For example, not every SME company needs a full standby hot site or a desk position waiting for each user. Many plans today rely on a large proportion of home workers accessing information via broadband and a VPN connection.

Testing schedules for BCP and DRP

BCP and DR plans are never finished. They are a "work in progress" and an important aspect of the work is to regularly test your disaster contingencies. The testing phase is as important as the planning because it is the first time you will see whether the information and backups that have been provisioned would actually allow a full recovery.

Working to BS 25999 standards, Prosyn will highlight any travel, practical or timescale limitations that need clearer definitions. This process of refinement will allow your management to confidently approach clients, insurance companies and the media with a definitive time that your organisation would require to recover from any incident.

For SME businesses, we offer a number of options to help spread the cost of the on-going reviews. We can split the testing into separate tasks to spread them throughout the year or include the cost in your IT support contract. Alternatively, we offer a low-budget "server and phone system recovery" test limited to reviewing only the critical elements of your plan.