Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BC/DR)
Kwanso LLC
01 Jan 2022
The purpose of this business continuity plan is to prepare Kwanso in the event of extended service outages caused by factors beyond our control (e.g., natural disasters, man-made events), and to restore services to the widest extent possible in a minimum time frame.
All Kwanso IT systems that are business critical. This policy applies to all employees of Kwanso and to all relevant external parties, including but not limited to Kwanso consultants and contractors.
The following scenarios are excluded from the BC/DR plan scope:
- Loss of availability of Kwanso satellite offices (these will be considered incidents)
In the event of a loss of availability of a hosting service provider, the Chief Technology Officer will confer with the IT Manager and executive staff to determine an appropriate response strategy.
In the event of a major disruption to production services and a disaster affecting the availability and/or security of the Kwanso office, senior managers and executive staff shall determine mitigation actions.
A disaster recovery test, including a test of backup restoration processes, shall be performed on an annual basis.
Continuity of information security shall be considered along with operational continuity.
In the case of an information security event or incident, refer to the Incident Response Plan.
If the Kwanso office becomes unavailable due to a disaster, all staff shall work remotely from their homes or any safe location.
Executive staff and senior managers should be notified of any disaster affecting Kwanso facilities or operations.
Communications shall take place over any available regular channels including Slack, email, phone and online meeting tools.
The IT Manager shall lead BC/DR efforts to mitigate losses and recover the corporate network and information systems.
Each department head shall be responsible for communications with their departmental staff and any actions needed to maintain continuity of their business functions. Departmental heads shall communicate regularly with executive staff and the IT Manager.
Managers shall be responsible for communicating with their direct reports and providing any needed assistance for staff to continue working from alternative locations.
The CTO, in conjunction with the CEO and CFO shall be responsible for any external and client communications regarding any disaster or business continuity actions that are relevant to customers and third parties.
The VP of Engineering, in conjunction with the CTO, shall be responsible for leading efforts to maintain continuity of Kwanso services to customers during a disaster.
The CHRO shall be responsible for internal communications to employees as well as any action needed to maintain physical health and safety of the workforce. The CHRO shall work with the IT Manager to ensure continuity of physical security at the Kwanso office.
Procedures for maintaining continuity of critical services in a disaster can be found in Appendix A.
Strategy for maintaining continuity of services can be seen in the following table:
Customer (Production) Service Delivery
Rely on AWS availability commitments, Google Cloud availability commitments and SLAs
Not dependent on Development Office.
Utilize Gmail and its distributed nature, rely on Google’s standard service level agreements.
All systems are vendor-hosted SaaS applications.
All systems are vendor-hosted SaaS applications.
- CRM, Telephony, Video Conferencing/Screen Share & Corp Email unaffected
- SUPPORT unaffected
- Development Office Staff offline (30-60 minutes)
- Remote Staff unaffected
Development Office Staff relocate to home offices (30-60 minutes)
Verify Telephony, CRM, & Email Connectivity at home offices (10 minutes)
Remotely resume normal operations
- CRM, Telephony, Video Conferencing/Screen Share & Corp Email unaffected
- SUPPORT offline
- Development Office Staff offline (variable impact)
- Remote Staff unaffected
Activate Remote Staff
Notify Customer Base of impaired functions & potential delays
Commandeer Field Resources for Critical Response
- CRM, Telephony, Video Conferencing/Screen Share, or Corp Email Affected
- SUPPORT partially affected (no new cases, manual triage required))
- Development Office Staff unaffected
- Remote Staff unaffected
Telephony Down
Notify Customer Base to use Support Portal or Email
Support Staff use Mobile Phones and/or Land Lines as needed
Email Down (Gmail/Corp Email)
Support Staff manually manage ‘case’ related communications
Support Staff use alternate email accounts as needed (iCloud)
CRM Down
Notify Customer Base that CRM is down
Activate ‘Spreadsheet’ Case Tracking (Google Sheets)
Leverage ‘Production’ Database for Entitlements, Case History, Configuration data.
Video Conferencing/ScreenShare Down (Zoom)
Support Staff utilize alternate service as needed