IT Employment

re:
tell them gently that they need to consider what would happen if all of the computers were not useable for a week.
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I tend to disagree because this hasn't worked for me in the past. That's because they don't believe it will happen.

Instead, tell them WHEN it's gonna happen.

For example - grab the stat of how many PC's get infected with virii and thell them, "in the next 12 months, x number of PC's will become infected.

As much as I hate to keep repeating the 9/11 mantra when discussing BC&DR planning, your post dragged me back to it. (Damn it.)

In your post, you state, "But for the DR planning,the companies would have shut their shops by now and mind you,many of those companies were Fortune-ranked companies..and they still are."

And on this point you are absolutely correct. In fact, some of the Fortune 500s were ready to do business the next day if not for the markets being closed for a few days afterwards.

But there were many businesses and organizations that shut their doors or could not continue operations because of improper BC&DR planning. In fact, when 7 WTC went down hours after the twin towers collapsed, the FBI and Secret Service lost the only evidence they had in some pretty major cases. The result was that the cases against some bad guys were dismissed due to lack of eveidence. It's an embarrassment and travesty all private, public, and government concerns could learn from. Unfortunately, many still have not.

My advice to the original post -- do a business impact analysis and show managementin broad, beautiful "Powerpoint" colors what the cost (cha-ching) will be their company for NOT having a strong BC&DR program. You would be wise to enlist not only the Accounting group in your company to help develop this analysis, but also enlist the help of your company's auditors and legal counsel to further highlight the risk of "doing nothing."

We all know the consequence of doing nothing with regards to BC&DR planning. 9/11 is proof enough. But now you need to convince management that their NIMBY-ism on this important "operational" facet is very short-sighted.

Defining a disaster drill in real time applications is in fact defining an operational recovery method. Prior to launching a drill a well defined recovery method should be well engineered with a post, primary, secondary, and possibly a trinary recovery system to be incorporated into routine schedules. In fact making recovery an integrated phase of daily operations would be wise preventive maintenence. An ounce of prevention is worth twenty pounds of cure.

Lots of good ideas/points from others. And you can try to sell with the best example, **1 (the tragedy of World Trade Center) or NY black out. Then compare with the lost and expense.

About ten years ago I was called in to fix a minor problem in the data centre of a large well-known international insurance company here in Hong Kong. While I was there a young lady, having finished her backup ejected the tape and placed it in a cardboard box adjacent to the server in the server cupboard. I went and checked and discovered that this was the one and only tape that this company possessed.
I immediately spoke to the boss and pointed out that a fire in the server cupboard would leave him with no backup and no possibility of continuing in business. He brushed me off with a comment like: "Who's ever heard of a fire in a high rise office building?" This was on Friday afternoon ...
Early Saturday morning I received a panicked telephone call from that self-same boss: the floor below theirs had been completely gutted by fire during the night and this morning they have no network ... please come and help.
When I arrived there, I noticed a certain amount of smoke damage and some charred skirting boards. The network cables were run through the skirting boards and had been burnt through. The server was okay, the backup tape was okay, but the charred skirting was less than a foot from the server cupboard. Water from the firefighting had soaked the carpet to the very door of the server cupboard.
Within the hour I had them in business by laying a temporary Ethernet cable straight across the top of the carpet until the "real" job could be done on Monday.
Within the week they had a complete set of backup tapes stored in the company's fire-proof safe at the opposite end of the building from the server cupboard, including one tape which had to be taken home by an executive every night.
There's nothing like a real scare to wake these guys up!

I don't know what part of the world you're from, but here in the US, an "Act of God" that destroys "Company A's" business will not excuse them of their debts, particularly if those debts were incurred prior to the Act.

I'm not a lawyer, but I know enough that if "Company A" owes me money and their operation goes in the crapper because of a disaster, I can pursue legal action against the principles of said company to recover what I'm owed -- even if it's but a fraction of the original debt. In short, the principals of Company A are still liable for the debt and in some cases, "personally" liable if the disaster was the result of negligence.

To make a long story short, any business owner/manager who rationalizes away BC&DR planning in the manner you describe needs his/her head examined or thrown out on their proverbial asses.