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By Chris Whitside

In business continuity planning today, questions about disasters begin not with "if" but with "when". Industry associations and government agencies are now demanding that financial services companies develop business continuity plans to protect customers and essential infrastructure. Many of FundSERV's customers have well-established strategic plans for dealing with disasters. Like FundSERV, they have disaster recovery plans to keep their mission-critical applications working at all times. In addition, they are developing and testing business continuity plans that will keep the rest of their critical business operations working too. Invariably, those customer plans depend on the availability of FundSERV's services.

"The project with the highest priority at FundSERV right now is the evolution of our business continuity plan," says FundSERV CFO, Frank Vree. "Virtually all third-party investment fund transactions in Canada flow through FundSERV, so we have a pressing need for a business continuity infrastructure significantly more advanced than that of other companies our size.

"The board of FundSERV endorsed a plan in October 2004 calling for a second site, new staff and new infrastructure to address this need. Most important though, the board confirmed that business continuity management must become integral to FundSERV's management, operations and initiatives. From now on, it will be part of everything we do."

Backup hardware is just one part of a business continuity plan (BCP). Larger and longer-lasting disasters will require more resources, most notably skilled and trained staff. A typical BCP includes five elements:

• Backups of data
  
  
• Contingency plans — procedures to follow after an operational mishap
  
  
• Disaster Recovery — recovery of processing capabilities
  
  
• Business Continuity — plan for recovering mission-critical business operations
  
  
• Business Continuity Management — building ensured availability into all management processes

"We are reviewing every aspect of FundSERV's operations and asking 'What if?'" says networking department head, Alex von Tiesenhausen. "For instance, what if the phone system is unavailable? Or what if travel is difficult and people can't make it to work? There won't be a stone unturned while we consider every contingency for each and every critical business function. Unfortunately, while one backup is enough for hardware systems, we need to have two backups for every human function. That means FundSERV employees will be looking at a lot of cross-training and disaster scenario testing in the future."

A key deliverable of FundSERV's new business continuity plan is a second business location. Facilities 25 km away have been selected and will be staffed by June with the minimum number required to ensure continuous operation. Since the second location will have full network and telecom connectivity, staff will be performing their regular duties there as well as testing business continuity.

Following industry best practices, FundSERV is moving toward the creation of a new enterprise risk management department. Among other functions, it will provide oversight and management for the entire business continuity program.

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