You're in charge of IT, facilities, or core operations for your organization when a hurricane or a fast-moving wildfire hits. What do you do? Simple. You follow your business continuity/disaster recovery plan. If you've prepared in advance, your operation or your company can continue to conduct business while competitors stumble and fall. Even if your building goes up in smoke, or the power is out for ten days, or cyber warriors cripple your IT systems, you know you will survive. But only if you have a plan. You don't have one? Then Disaster Recovery, Crisis Response, and Business Continuity: A Management Desk Reference, which explains the principles of business continuity and disaster recovery in plain English, might be the most important book you'll read in years. Business continuity is a necessity for all businesses as emerging regulations, best practices, and customer expectations force organizations to develop and put into place business continuity plans, resilience features, incident-management processes, and recovery strategies. In larger organizations, responsibility for business continuity falls to specialist practitioners dedicated to continuity and the related disciplines of crisis management and IT service continuity. In smaller or less mature organizations, it can fall to almost anyone to prepare contingency plans, ensure that the critical infrastructure and systems are protected, and give the organization the greatest chance to survive events that can--and do--bankrupt businesses. A practical how-to guide, this book explains exactly what you need to do to set up and run a successful business continuity program. Written by an experienced consultant with 25 years industry experience in disaster recovery and business continuity, it contains tools and techniques to make business continuity, crisis management, and IT service continuity much easier. If you need to prepare plans and test and maintain them, then this book is written for you. You will learn: How to complete a business impact assessment. How to write plans that are easy to implement in a disaster. How to test so that you know your plans will work. How to make sure that your suppliers won't fail you in a disaster. How to meet customer, audit, and regulatory expectations. Disaster Recovery, Crisis Response, and Business Continuity: A Management Desk Reference will provide the tools, techniques, and templates that will make your life easier, give you peace of mind, and turn you into a local hero when disaster strikes.

Imagine a Category 4 storm making landfall, dumping 40 inches of rain on the region and destroying hundreds of houses and businesses. The office of a small business could be entirely inundated. Employees may be unable to work for days, if not weeks, on-site. Utility lines may be down for an extended period of time, and power spikes or equipment failure may result in the loss of critical digital data files. While such events may appear implausible, they are not unheard of, and the consequences can be devastating. Businesses must be prepared for any eventuality. They must have plans and procedures in place to mitigate these risks and respond to any negative outcomes. That is what the catastrophe recovery field is all about. It's critical to be aware of the resources and solutions accessible in order to comprehend catastrophe recovery and the efforts firms may take to assure their preparation. What is the definition of disaster recovery? The formal planning process through which a corporation builds its blueprint for responding to disruptive incidents, which can range from natural disasters to cyberattacks to power outages, is known as disaster recovery. A disaster recovery plan, a formal document that describes responsibilities, policies, processes, and resource allocation to assist firm executives in navigating the aftermath of a cataclysmic event, is often the product of the disaster recovery process. A disaster recovery plan's ultimate purpose is to help businesses minimise the consequences of a disaster and resume normal operations as fast as feasible. It's crucial to realise that disasters can have far-reaching consequences for a company, including lost productivity, income, brand reputation damage, and consumer unhappiness. Businesses use a disaster recovery plan to get back up and running as quickly as possible, ideally reducing or limiting the negative consequences. All possible contingencies must be addressed in disaster recovery strategies. Companies must account for more than just data loss; they must also account for structural damage or utilities that are down for days at a time. Furthermore, effective disaster recovery plans handle all aspects of business operations, including phone and internet outages as well as the inability to use certain areas of the structure. Disaster Recovery's Evolution In recent decades, the field of catastrophe recovery has advanced tremendously. Prior to the 1970s, the primary priority in disaster recovery was making and carefully storing paper copies of all vital papers. In other words, businesses primarily aimed to ensure that essential documents were backed up in the event of a fire or flood. Disaster recovery has evolved to prioritise digital data backups, cybersecurity, and associated factors as more and more company processes have switched to computers. Companies are increasingly aiming to keep their critical files accessible in the cloud even if their main operations centre is unavailable. The introduction of cloud computing is viewed as a watershed moment in disaster recovery, offering businesses with a variety of options for reducing the risk of their digital assets.

As an instructor, you have seen business continuity and risk management grow exponentially, offering an exciting array of career possibilities to your students. They need the tools needed to begin their careers -- and to be ready for industry changes and new career paths. You cannot afford to use limited and inflexible teaching materials that might close doors or limit their options. Written with your classroom in mind,Business Continuity and Risk Management: Essentials of Organizational Resilience is the flexible, modular textbook you have been seeking -- combining business continuity and risk management. Full educator-designed teaching materials available for download. From years of experience teaching and consulting in Business Continuity and Risk, Kurt J. Engemann and Douglas M. Henderson explain everything clearly without extra words or extraneous philosophy. Your students will grasp and apply the main ideas quickly. They will feel that the authors wrote this textbook with them specifically in mind -- as if their questions are answered even before they ask them. Covering both Business Continuity and Risk Management and how these two bodies of knowledge and practice interface, Business Continuity and Risk Management: Essentials of Organizational Resilience is a state-of-the-art textbook designed to be easy for the student to understand -- and for you, as instructor, to present. Flexible, modular design allows you to customize a study plan with chapters covering: Business Continuity and Risk principles and practices. Information Technology and Information Security. Emergency Response and Crisis Management. Risk Modeling – in-depth instructions for students needing the statistical underpinnings in Risk Management. Global Standards and Best Practices Two real-world case studies are integrated throughout the text to give future managers experience in applying chapter principles to a service company and a manufacturer. Chapter objectives, discussion topics, review questions, numerous charts and graphs. Glossary and Index. Full bibliography at the end of each chapter. Extensive, downloadable classroom-tested Instructor Resources are available for college courses and professional development training, including slides, syllabi, test bank, discussion questions, and case studies. Endorsed by The Business Continuity Institute (BCI) and The Institute of Risk Management (IRM). QUOTES "It's difficult to write a book that serves both academia and practitioners, but this text provides a firm foundation for novices and a valuable reference for experienced professionals."--Security Management Magazine "The authors...bring the subject to life with rich teaching and learning features, making it an essential read for students and practitioners alike." – Phil AUTHOR BIOS Kurt J. Engemann, PhD, CBCP, is the Director of the Center for Business Continuity and Risk Management and Professor of Information Systems in the Hagan School of Business at Iona College. He is the editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Business Continuity and Risk Management Douglas M. Henderson, FSA, CBCP, is President of Disaster Management, Inc., and has 20+ years of consulting experience in all areas of Business Continuity and Emergency Response Management. He is the author of Is Your Business Ready for the Next Disaster? and a number of templates.

Although now a growing and respectable research field, crisis management—as a formal area of study—is relatively young, having emerged since the 1980s following a succession of such calamities as the Bhopal gas leak, Chernobyl nuclear accident, Space Shuttle Challenger loss, and Exxon Valdez oil spill. Analysis of organizational failures that caused such events helped drive the emerging field of crisis management. Simultaneously, the world has experienced a number of devastating natural disasters: Hurricane Katrina, the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, etc. From such crises, both human-induced and natural, we have learned our modern, tightly interconnected and interdependent society is simply more vulnerable to disruption than in the past. This interconnectedness is made possible in part by crisis management and increases our reliance upon it. As such, crisis management is as beneficial and crucial today as information technology has become over the last few decades. Crisis is varied and unavoidable. While the examples highlighted above were extreme, we see crisis every day within organizations, governments, businesses and the economy. A true crisis differs from a "routine" emergency, such as a water pipe bursting in the kitchen. Per one definition, "it is associated with urgent, high-stakes challenges in which the outcomes can vary widely (and are very negative at one end of the spectrum) and will depend on the actions taken by those involved." Successfully engaging, dealing with, and working through a crisis requires an understanding of options and tools for individual and joint decision making. Our Encyclopedia of Crisis Management comprehensively overviews concepts and techniques for effectively assessing, analyzing, managing, and resolving crises, whether they be organizational, business, community, or political. From general theories and concepts exploring the meaning and causes of crisis to practical strategies and techniques relevant to crises of specific types, crisis management is thoroughly explored. Features & Benefits: A collection of 385 signed entries are organized in A-to-Z fashion in 2 volumes available in both print and electronic formats. Entries conclude with Cross-References and Further Readings to guide students to in-depth resources. Selected entries feature boxed case studies, providing students with "lessons learned" in how various crises were successfully or unsuccessfully managed and why. Although organized A-to-Z, a thematic "Reader′s Guide" in the front matter groups related entries by broad areas (e.g., Agencies & Organizations, Theories & Techniques, Economic Crises, etc.). Also in the front matter, a Chronology provides students with historical perspective on the development of crisis management as a discrete field of study. The work concludes with a comprehensive Index, which—in the electronic version—combines with the Reader′s Guide and Cross-References to provide thorough search-and-browse capabilities. A template for an "All-Hazards Preparedness Plan" is provided the backmatter; the electronic version of this allows students to explore customized response plans for crises of various sorts. Appendices also include a Resource Guide to classic books, journals, and internet resources in the field, a Glossary, and a vetted list of crisis management-related degree programs, crisis management conferences, etc.

Disasters can serve as focusing events that increase agenda attention related to issues of disaster response, recovery, and preparedness. Increased agenda attention can lead to policy changes and organisational learning. The degree and type of learning that occurs within a government organization after a disaster may matter to policy outcomes related to individual, household, and community-level risks and resilience. Local governments are the first line of disaster response but also bear the burden of performing long-term disaster recovery and planning for future events. Crow and Albright present the first framework for understanding if, how, and to what effect communities and local governments learn after a disaster strikes. Drawing from analyses conducted over a five-year period following extreme flooding in Colorado, USA, Community Disaster Recovery: Moving from Vulnerability to Resilience presents a framework of community-level learning after disaster and the factors that catalyse policy change towards resilience.

"In this book you will find : Complete coverage of the 3 categories of disaster: natural hazards, human-caused hazards, and accidental/technical hazards, updated information on risks from cyber attacks, rioting, protests, product tampering, bombs, explosions and terrorism, extensive disaster planning and readiness check-lists for IT infrastructure, enterprise applications, servers and desktops.-Clear guidance on developing alternate work and computing sites and emergency facilities, actionable advice on emergency readiness and response, up-to-date information on the legal implications of data loss following a security breach or disaster."--Editor.