Business Continuity Disaster Plans and Cyber Attacks on Internet Backbones Considered

If she stayed home she would have died. Hence the importance of getting people out of danger as soon as possible and monitoring them afterwards.

A good fire evacuation plan should include: -

• What to do when the fire is first noticed;


• Guidelines around when staff should or should not to attempt to put the fire out themselves;


• An explanation of the various fire extinguishers and other fire appliances;


• A listing of fire wardens and how they manage the evacuation;


• A process to ensure that everybody leaves;


• A list of what management should take with them;


• A nominated assembly point plus a secondary assembly point; and


• A process of ensuring everybody is located at the assembly point.

A business continuity plan which includes a fire evacuation policy should be practiced on a regular basis. Depending on the number of staff you should explain the policy twice a year with a full evacuation undertaken yearly. Not only does this ensure that new people are introduced to the policy but it also reminds everyone what they are to do.

A well thought out disaster plan must include fire drills that have been created from the fire evacuation plan. These drills will allow you to work out where the plan fails. For example I was in a fire drill where the one and only fire exit on my side of the building was cut off by a recent delivery of stationary, six large boxes piled three high in a standard sized corridor - not a good idea.

Another situation I was involved was a company kitchen. The company policy indicated that a carbon dioxide fire extinguisher must be within 10 metres of the kitchen stove area. What was reality was the carbon dioxide extinguisher was on a wall outside the kitchen in a corridor - but was within the 10 metres - so the project manager was happy. Alas there was a water based extinguisher proudly displayed next to the stove. Now placing water onto an electrical or fat fire is VERY dangerous. Even with my role as the fire warden it still took me some time talking to get management to swap them over.

Natural disasters like fires, floods or hurricanes can strike at a moment's notice and can affect business continuity in a major way. Disaster recovery has become a big part of business planning and many businesses have plans for relocation, collocation of important computer services and outsourcing crucial business functions in the time of an emergency.

When disaster strikes, many businesses turn to telephone answering services to provide phone coverage during emergency situations and power or phone outages. This is critical when businesses rely on their phones to keep in contact with customers and can lose business if there phones are down for even a short amount of time. Telephone answering services that provide disaster recovery are offering businesses a valuable service and are insuring that business will continue when disaster strikes.

If a company's phones are out of commission for whatever reason, they can be routed to a call center so they can still have their phones answered and meet their customer's needs. While a business may have to temporarily close its brick and mortar location due to a disaster, their business can continue to function through working phone lines.