The quest for information systems continuity in a financial institution

Abstract

The corporate landscape is littered and scarred by companies that never made it once they had encountered a disaster. And these disasters are on the increase as recent history so vividly reminds us: Hurricane Katrina in 2005 that rendered parts of the Gulf Coast of America desolate, the 2003 Asian tsunami disater and the 2001 WTC Twin Tower terrorist attack just to name a few. In the case of Hurricane Katrina, it was estimated that it would take between 30 and 80 days to "de-water" New Orleans. What is an organisation that relies on its computerised IS to do when it finds itself in this situation? Companies that increasingly depend on their IS for business processes, and this is the norm, have to ensure the availability of their information processing capabilities otherwise they risk going under. Research has shown that without a tried and tested business continuity plan, the intitial disaster is just one of two disasters: 90% of the time financial losses caused by the data centre outage have led directly to business failure. The Quest for IS Continuity Planning is a study that attempts to look at the things to consider when developing IS Continuity plans. In this study, we examine literature in the field of IS Contingency planning, carry out a business impact analysis and develop an IS Continuity Plan using a financial institution as a Case study.