Risk Assessment Continuity Plan - Essay Example

Simply put, a continuity plan comes into play when internal or external factors influence the company to resort to emergency actions in order to continue providing services to their clients. In our case, the company’s continuity plan comes into action if the database integrity is damaged or information security is compromised. As suggested by Britt (2005) a modular stepwise plan is most effective and that is how our continuity plan would function if the risk assessment recommendations are already established.

Since our security is working on several layers, the continuity plan would also work in layers which will be connected to how bad a breach is made into our systems. For instance, if a hacker attack has been detected and we know that the hacker did not manage to go thorough any layers of our security, it would be useless to require a physical change of location for our database storage servers since it would simply mean that we are reacting too much. On the other hand, if there is a fire in the building which damages the property to such an extent that business becomes impossible to continue in the same location, a secondary location must be activated where we can continue to provide services to our clients and maintain our operations at more or less the same levels.

Similarly, a virus which brings down our network or corrupts the database stored on one location might require the activation of a secondary location where the most recent backup of the database could be used for continuity of business (Britt, 2005). As it has been ascertained by nearly every writer working on the topic of continuity plans, backups are essential for a smooth recovery from disaster (Gouldson, 2002). An accidental disaster does mean a flood or hurricane since in those cases a company may have a few days of warning to ensure that everything is in place to counter that.

An accidental disaster can be natural, i.e. earthquake or lightning strike but