Business Continuity Planning

The purpose of this toolkit is to provide resources for business continuity and disaster recovery planning, including guides, templates, examples and tips.  The information provided herein is intended to be of value in the development, testing, enactment and revising of business continuity efforts. This Business Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery toolkit is an ongoing work in progress.  As new resources are developed and best practices shift, updated information will be provided here.

Disaster mitigation and business continuity planning remain critical issues for all institutions. Whether by acts of God or acts of man, events can occur that demonstrate the fragility of the underlying infrastructure that connects IT resources with people. Schools must have actionable plans that will support the ongoing delivery of instruction and mission-critical business functions through the entire life cycle of an event. This presentation will discuss two different types of disasters that severely impacted business operations. Middle Tennessee State University, the largest undergraduate institution in Tennessee, recently faced the prospect of extended degradation of business operations when a construction accident pulverized communications across campus. Eckerd College, a small private liberal arts college located on the water in St. Petersburg, has been confronted with the challenge of temporarily transforming the college from a small campus-based residential community into a geographically dispersed virtual community in the aftermath of repeated evacuations due to hurricanes. Lessons learned and strategies developed will be discussed.

As major disasters bring acute awareness to readiness, many higher education institutions have taken the initiative to develop and refine their handling of major disruptions on campus. This presentation provides information and resources collected from experienced business continuity and disaster recovery planning professionals; a toolkit for Business Continuity.

Organizations are realizing that business continuity plans are not a “nice to have” but a “must have.” Prince George's Community College and Penn State will discuss the different planning processes they chose to create BC plans. One process built a plan methodically following five phases, while the other process completed a plan within six months.

What would you do if a broken water pipe temporally disabled your IT capability, or a fire destroyed your primary or secondary IT facilities? Penn State has developed a plan addressing three unique event levels--incidents, disasters, and catastrophes--with three plan phases, each of which initiates a unique recovery response.

"Students arriving on campus this semester are getting a new task added to their to-do lists: Log onto "Who I Am" and provide emergency contact information.

The new service is the latest upgrade to Cornell's ongoing emergency planning effort. Since the late 1990s, well before 9/11 and recent U.S. campus shootings, Cornell has had a team of officials and responders dedicated to planning for events most people don't want to think about."

The Governor's Task Force on Campus Safety is focused on ensuring the safety of college campuses across Wisconsin. At the direction of Governor Jim Doyle, the Task Force is reviewing and compiling criteria for developing best practices from universities, colleges, and other higher education institutions in Wisconsin and across the nation. This information will be submitted to the governor and will serve as a resource for college administrators, law enforcement officers, and emergency preparedness officials.

Many campuses are exploring how information technologies might play a critical role, when disaster strikes, in ensuring the continuity of their most essential business, educating students. This panel will explore how Web-based services can be used to minimize the impact on instruction of a significant shutdown of the physical campus. Not all disasters have the same uniform impact; this panel will emphasize how to plan the process, from course preparation to delivery, for pandemics like Avian Flu.

The annual Campus Computing Survey focuses on IT security and crisis management, finding gaps in preparation but fewer attacks on networks.