Basel II Accord for International Banking Operational Risk is defined as, “Risk of loss from inadequate or failed internal; processes, people, and systems or external events “.   When Processes, People or Systems fail, whether it be from internal or external events, the losses can be substantial.  As an example, the Ponemon Institute estimates that worldwide organizational are losing over $35 Billion monthly from data center downtime.  Nicholas G. Carr point out in his seminal Harvard Business Review article IT Doesn’t Matter, “today, an IT disruption can paralyze a company’s ability to make products, deliver its services, and connect with its customers, not to mention foul its reputation … even a brief disruption in availability of technology can be devastating.”

There are two primary ways for an organization to increase value.  The first way is to...

Operational resilience is the economical balance between an organization’s requirements for service availability and the consequence of an interruption to that service.  The likelihood that your organization will experience a catastrophic loss from a material service interruption caused by an IT operational-problem is far greater than any service interruption being caused by some disaster or ‘black swan’ event.  So if the overarching objective is to protect our organizations from bad events that generate losses then it is time to focus our attention to creating resilient IT operations.   

We live in a technology driven world.  Every possible business processes has been automated; automated to the point where Information Technology is deeply embedded in the operating fabric of our business and the organization is now highly dependent on information technology.  IT has become a microcosm of the organization and it is used to...

Interested in helping Symantec name a future solution designed to recover applications in the event of a disaster?  Perhaps more importantly, do you want to enter a drawing to win an Apple iPad 3?  If so, please fill out our DR Survey and enter with a chance to win an iPad 3!

Disasters happen.  In fact, according to the Munchener Ruckversicherungs-Gesellschaft, Geo Risks Research, 355 events, from floods to tornados to tsunamis and earthquakes occurred in 2011.  IT organizations need protection from such horrific events, but also those that are more common place, for instance power outages and equipment failures.  

Here are a few interesting statistics from the latest Symantec State of the Data Center report (available later this year):

• 70% of organizations experience downtime from power failure (11.3 hours per outage)
• 63% experience cyber attacks (52.7 hours per outage)
• 26% conducted a power outage and failure impact assessment
• Median downtime per outage in the last 12 months was 5 hours
• Organizations experienced an average of 4 downtime incidents in the past 12 months

When most people hear the term "Disaster Recovery", they immediately think of data...