Disaster Recovery: Business Continuity Planning

Most businesses will experience threats to their critical systems – threats like power outage, fire, flood or a computer virus. Critical systems disruptions, no matter how long, are not only frustrating, but can cause severe financial losses and threaten the survival of your organization.

Businesses depend heavily on computer technology, communications and automated systems. Disruption for even a few days can cause irreparable financial damage. While all disasters can’t be predicted or prevented, their effects can be mitigated, which is why a business continuity plan is so important. It not only provides your organization with a comprehensive statement of actions to be taken before, during and after a disaster to minimize its impact, it also offers a certain level of comfort in knowing that if a catastrophe occurs it will not result in complete financial disaster.

Freed Maxick CPAs provides organization-wide business continuity planning. Developing a business continuity plan is a difficult and complex process. Our advisors work with you to develop a plan that you can have confidence in – one that provides for seamless continuation of important business operations and recovery of facilities, technology and other critical resources. Our approach to business continuity planning often includes the following elements:

• Evaluation and prioritization of critical needs
• A comprehensive written plan addressing the key operations in each functional area
• Identification of high-risk threats, their impact and prevention techniques
• Prioritization of processing and operations to determine the recovery timeframe required for each operation, function, system or service
• Analysis of existing disaster recovery insurance
• Review of potential recovery facilities and off-site procedures