Service Design
IT Service Continuity Management
Introduction
The IT Service Continuity Management process ensures that the required IT facilities
can be recovered
after
a disaster
within
the
required and
agreed business time
scales.
Purpose
The purpose of IT Service Continuity Management (ITSCM)
is to support the overall Business Continuity
Management process by
ensuring that the
required IT infrastructure and the
IT
service provision can be recovered
within required and agreed upon business timeframes.
It plays a role in raising awareness of continuity and recovery requirements,
and to justify
and
implement
Business Continuity Management process
and
Business Continuity Plans.
Objectives
Objectives of IT Service Continuity Management (ITSCM) are:
• Maintain a set of IT Service Continuity Plan and IT recovery plans.
• Complete regular Business Impact Analysis (BIA) exercises.
• Provide advice and guidance to all other areas of business and IT.
• Ensure appropriate continuity and recovery mechanisms are out in place.
• Assess the impact
of all changes on the IT Service Continuity Plans and IT
recovery plans.
• Ensure proactive measures
are taken
to improve the availability of services
implemented.
• Negotiate and agree to the necessary contracts with suppliers.
Scope
ITSCM focuses on those events that the business considers significant enough to be treated as a 'disaster'.
The ITSCM process
includes:
• The agreement of the scope of the ITSCM process and the policies adopted
• BIA to quantify
the impact loss of IT service
would have on the business
• Risk assessment and
management. the
risk
identification and
risk assessment to identify potential threats to continuity and the likelihood of the threats becoming
reality. This also includes taking measures
to manage the identified threats where this can be cost justified. The approach
to managing these threats will form the core of the ITSCM strategy and plans
• Production of an overall ITSCM strategy that must be integrated into the BCM strategy. This can be produced following the BIA and the development of the risk assessment, and is likely to include elements of risk reduction as well as selection of appropriate and comprehensive recovery options
• Production of an ITSCM plan, which again must be integrated with the overall
BCM plans
• Testing of the plans
• Ongoing operation and maintenance of the plans.
Business Impact
Analysis
The purpose of a BIA is to quantify the impact to the business that loss of service
would have.
This impact could be a
‘hard’ impact that can be precisely
identified
– such
as financial loss – or ‘soft’ impact – such as public relations, moral, health and safety or loss of competitive advantage.
The BIA will identify the most important services to the organization and will therefore be a key input to the strategy.
Risk Assessment
This is an assessment
of the level of threat and the extent to which an organization is vulnerable to that threat.
Risk assessment can also be used in assessing and reducing the chance of
normal
operational incidents and is a technique used by availability
management to ensure the required
availability and reliability levels can be maintained.
Risk assessment is also a key aspect of information security management.
A number of risk assessment
and management
methods are available for both the commercial and government sectors. Risk assessment is the assessment of the risks that
may give rise to service disruption
or security violation.
Risk management
is concerned
with identifying
appropriate risk responses
or cost-justifiable countermeasures to combat those risks.
Roles
The responsibilities of an IT Service Continuity Manager include:
• Perform Business Impact Analysis
for all services
• Implement and maintain
the ITSCM process and represent the IT services
function within the Business Continuity Management.
• Develop and maintain all ITSCM plans, risks and activities.
• Perform risk assessment and risk management.
• Manage the IT Service Continuity Plan while in operation.
• Maintain a comprehensive IT testing schedule.
• Communicate and maintain awareness of ITSCM objectives.
• Conduct regular reviews of Continuity Plans.
• Negotiate and manage contracts with providers.
• Assess changes
that have impact on IT Service Continuity and
IT Continuity
Plans.
• Attend CAB meetings.
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