Emergencies, disasters and accidents can happen at any time, so being prepared to handle a crisis and continue to operate at peak efficiency is a critical responsibility for all organizations. In the event of a disaster, AAI has a crisis plan in place to minimize the impact of a disaster on our operations and, therefore, our clients’ operations. Here we highlight some of the major components of our crisis plan that will help ensure an emergency or disaster won’t negatively impact your business continuity.
AAI Has an Overall Response and Recovery Crisis Plan in Place
AAI’s crisis plan documents viable guidelines and procedures to follow through emergency situations. Although the types of events that could occur have many variables, our plan provides an overall response and recovery approach that can be used regardless of the specific emergency. In addition, we test and revise our crisis plan regularly to ensure it doesn’t become obsolete.
The goals of our crisis plan include the following:
- To have an established organizational structure in place
- To restore and regain processing (infrastructure, computing, and electrical service) capabilities
- To minimize the impact to clients through the rapid implementation of business continuity strategies
Protecting Office Documentation
Protecting and preserving critical data is a key to success in disaster recovery planning. At AAI, we maintain backups of the following documentation both locally and offsite:
- Hardware and software assets
- All client data, including email and accounting systems
- Service and key contact information.
In the event of a disaster that involves property damage or results in limited access to the AAI offices, you can rest assured that your organization’s data is safe and retrievable. AAI also maintains spare information technology equipment offsite that can be used in the event of a disaster to reduce the recovery time.
AAI’s Disaster Impact Timetable
To help facilitate recovery in the event of a disaster, AAI has defined three levels of impact based on the length of the disruption and will engage our in-house team as well as our IT and phone and other experts to move us to full operation as swiftly as possible:
- Short-Term Outage – This is defined as a period of time during which AAI doesn’t require computerized operations or production facilities, or when the outage is in the same day or less. During a short-term outage, our team will make every reasonable effort to provide our clients with critical services by trying to restore or replace the failed system at our offices and/or continue operations using established short-term, intra-day procedures.
- Medium-Term Outage – This type of outage occurs when AAI’s primary systems or facilities will not be available for up to 48 hours. If efforts to restore the environment at our primary facility fail, operations may be suspended for that time period, moved to alternate sites, and/or have personnel relocate or telecommute in an effort to ensure minimal impact on our operations.
- Long-Term Outage – If AAI’s primary systems or facility are unavailable for more than two days, personnel and resources will be moved to established recovery sites. In the case of a long-term outage, the most critical systems will be restored within the first four days.
Regardless of the type of emergency or length of the outage, AAI’s crisis plan ensures we can react swiftly to continue to serve our clients, fully protect our clients’ data, as well as minimize the impact on their operations.
Is Your Organization Prepared for a Disaster?
In the event of a disaster, how fast could your organization be up and running again? AAI has developed an audit process to record all the important information that your organization needs to be functional in minimal time, including numbers for bank and merchant accounts, investment accounts, insurance policies, and passwords for electronic accounts. If you haven’t conducted such an audit, contact us or give us a call at 609-890-9207 to discuss adding this vital process to your organization’s security system.