Business Continuity Exercises
How effective are your business continuity plans? Are people familiar with them? Have staff or procedures changed? Are plans still current or are they sitting on a shelf? How confident are you that your ICT will meet its recovery objectives?
How prepared are your people and teams for the pressure of recovering from an incident?
To ensure your plans work in the face of reality, they must be rehearsed regularly through well designed and executed exercises. Exercising is part of business continuity best practice and a requirement for compliance with the new British Standard for Business Continuity Management - BS25999.
Steelhenge offers a full range of exercise options to validate your plans, rehearse your procedures and your people from strategic senior management level through the tactical to the operational front line staff.
Business continuity exercises tailored to your needs
Exercises may be delivered as individual events to meet a specific business continuity objective or as part of a developmental programme designed to increase the readiness of your organisation on a continuous basis.
We have designed, planned and delivered successful business continuity exercises time and again for many different organisations of all sizes. Our exercise staff are experts with many years exercise delivery experience. To run an effective exercise is a detailed and complex activity which cannot be underestimated. Working with us you can be confident that your exercise will achieve its objectives.
All our business continuity exercises are designed to be developmental in nature, not as a test that can be failed. Our expertise enables us to apply or reduce pressure as required as the exercise unfolds, allowing staff to develop and gain confidence in their roles.
The nature and scale of the exercise proposed will be based on your needs, the complexity of your organisation and the maturity of your business continuity preparation.
Business Continuity Exercise Options
Exercises offered range from simple crisis plan walk-throughs and table top exercises to more resource-intensive full simulation exercises involving multiple teams, third parties and external agencies many of whom may be geographically dispersed.
Business continuity exercise options
|
 |
- Business continuity plan walk-throughs
- Scenario based workshops
- Table top exercises ((TTX) also known as desk top exercises)
|
|
- Data Recovery and System Build Tests
- Command Post Exercises (CPX)
- Full Simulation Exercises (SIMEX)
- Live Exercises (LIVEX)
|
|
|
|
Our methodology carries you through from the agreement of objectives to delivery of the post-exercise report (PXR) and recommendations for refinement of business continuity plans, training needs of staff and next level of exercise. We prepare the exercise architecture, design the scenario and plans, work on the supporting documentation and preparation of “players”, observers, umpires and supporting staff as well as delivering the event on the day and gathering feedback through a ‘hot-wash-up’.
Observers
This process is supported by our own excellent team of impartial observers who watch the team(s) work and gather and summarise data on every aspect of the business continuity response.
Steelhenge will also supply experienced, impartial observers to support business continuity exercises organised by you.
Virtual News Network
Many of our business continuity exercises are supported by real-time media play. This service ranges from supply of media clips, a single journalist with – or without - a camera through to complete media teams with a mobile studio, live reporting and interviewing and transfer to TV or PC feeds across the exercise. Linked to this we can run a virtual news network (VNN) based around a secure website replicating the sort of feed to be experienced through 24-hour news stations such as Sky News, BBC News 24 or CNN.
Exercise Network Solutions
Some clients like to replicate their organisation’s IT network without the risk of leakage of exercise play into their real system. To achieve this, Steelhenge will build a Local Area Network (LAN) using hardware which we provide specifically for the event. This carries all traffic that a normal network would within a safe and secure environment.
The LAN also links to our exercise management tool (EMT) which allows us to build an e-mail range of exercise play both before the event to help create the scenario and during the exercise in accordance with a Main Events List. The EMT captures responses and reactions which helps in post-exercise review. This is a bespoke piece of software designed by Steelhenge to meet our clients’ requirements.
|
