Continuity
A continuity plan written and never tested gives false assurance, which is worse than none. What counts is the level of service maintained during an incident, and how long the service takes to return.
Service level during an incident
Levels, from top to bottom:nominal servicereduced service, essential functions maintainedservice interrupted
- Prepared organisation
- Unprepared organisation
- Before
- Critical assets are inventoried and the response has been rehearsed.
- Detection
- The anomaly is seen by monitoring, not reported by the user.
- Containment
- The affected perimeter is isolated; essential functions hold.
- Recovery
- Restoration follows a tested procedure, within a defined time.
Backup and restoration
Backups are sized on the tolerable data loss, defined function by function with the client. Their validity is verified by actual restoration, at agreed intervals, and the outcome of the exercise is recorded.
Degraded operation
A critical system must keep delivering its essential functions when part of it is unavailable. Which functions must hold, which may be suspended and in what order service is restored are settled at design time.
Proposed objectives
Data-loss and recovery-time objectives are proposed function by function, discussed, then written into the contract. We publish no generic value: a figure shown out of context means nothing and commits wrongly.
Shared at pre-qualification
This material is provided to an identified organisation once the request has been qualified.
- Backup policy and schedule of restoration exercises.
- Recovery objectives proposed for the scope envisaged.
- Report of the most recent exercise on a comparable scope.
The other areas
- SecuritySecurity is built into the system lifecycle, from design to decommissioning.
- Data and sovereigntyData entrusted to us remains the property of the client organisation.
- ComplianceNo certification is displayed until it is obtained and verifiable.
- ReversibilityThe exit plan is settled before commissioning, not at the point of departure.
- TransparencyWhat is public, what is shared, what never leaves.
Consultations · Pre-qualifications · Partnerships
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