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Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Solutions

VeriSign Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity solutions help you reduce the risk of accidents and minimize the impact of unavoidable disasters. Our services help you focus on the real threats to your business and prioritize solutions.

The Purpose

We help you prepare for disasters, accidents, and tragedies - to return operations to normal as quickly as possible and to keep downtime to a minimum.

Reduce the Risk of Disaster That Don’t Have to Happen 
We can help you reduce the risk of some disasters. You can greatly reduce human threats like vandalism and sabotage with the right technology coupled with the right policies and practices - and a well-trained staff. You can anticipate technical threats like equipment failure and power outages - and demote them from potential disasters to inconveniences.

Reduce the Impact of Disaster That Are Unavoidable 
We help you prepare for disasters that are real and unpredictable: natural disasters such as fires and earthquakes or human tragedies like terrorism and war. We help you develop a plan to deal with the disaster and to get back to business with as little disruption as possible. There are forces that are beyond anyone’s reasonable control - but you don’t have to be helpless when you face them.

We can:

• Assess your current disaster recovery plan to see if it’s complete and adequate
• Create a detailed technical infrastructure strategy to implement your current plan
• Develop a new plan
• Implement the technical architecture that your plan requires
• Develop a plan that’s appropriate depending on whether you own or lease your site
• Adjust our recommendations depending on whether your site is hot, warm, or cold.jhg.

Hot sites are the safest but the most expensive to set up and maintain. Data is replicated offsite and it can be replaced almost immediately. Warm sites are similar, but the data isn’t refreshed as often. Cold or cool sites maintain data on a service bureau model, and it has to be brought back into the main system after a loss. Many businesses use all three, depending on need.

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Value to You

Downtime Can Cost $1M an Hour 
Depending on your business - and given the potential for lost revenue, lost productivity, lost sales opportunities, inventory spoilage, litigation, and so on - the cost of downtime can range from the thousands to over $1M an hour. Given the large costs of disasters, it’s possible that one major could cost you your entire business.

Failure Can Have Legal Ramifications 
Certain regulations and industry standards, such as the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC), require a recovery and continuity plan. Without an up-to-date plan, you might be out of compliance.

Planning Keeps You Competitive 
If you’re a business such as an application service provider or an Internet service provider, you may need to achieve 99.999% availability to remain competitive and protect the value of your brand. Disaster planning helps keep you competitive.

Planning Protects Your Employees 
Protecting your profits and your ability to do business is, of course, essential - but protecting your employees is paramount.

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How We Work

1. We identify critical business processes.

We help you pinpoint the processes that are truly critical to your business - to focus your plan on what’s essential. We evaluate the cost not just of downtime - but of working around problems and catching up when systems are back online. 

2. We assess the impact of a disaster on your business.

We identify the longest downtime you can tolerate - and the greatest amount of data you can afford to lose. We develop resource requirements. We conduct a cost-benefit analysis. 

3. We identify risks to your critical business processes.

We itemize everything that plays a part in your processes - from users to workstations to servers to data. We map the elements to the processes. We identify the risks to those elements - and the protections in place.

We examine the architecture of your network and the design of the underlying processes and controls for inherent risks.  

4. We develop a business continuity plan.

We identify the risks that are greatest - and a strategy for helping to reduce them. We develop a technical infrastructure strategy that includes:

• Redundant data storage
• Diverse network connectivity
• Fault-tolerant facilities
• Monitoring services

5. We prepare you to recover from a disaster.

We determine the best approach that’s going to allow you to return to normal as quickly as possible. We prepare alternate processing capabilities. We document your critical systems and develop detailed plans for rebuilding them. We plan for off-site storage for your documents and data. 

6. We develop a disaster recovery plan.

We develop a procedure for activating the plan. We define a recovery team that’s guided by a process and with assigned responsibilities. We develop a process for setting up operations at an alternate site and resuming your critical business processes there. 

7. We reinforce maintenance for your disaster recovery program.

We test the plan with walk-throughs and simulations. We train your staff and build their awareness. We develop procedures for incorporating changes. 

How Long It Takes 
The amount of time it takes to develop a disaster recovery and business continuity plans varies widely, from three weeks to six months.  

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The Results

A Plan for Prevention and Recovery 
We provide you with documentation that identifies the faults that can contribute to a disaster - as well as the faults that can inhibit your recovery. We also give you recommendations on changes to make to your architecture to help remedy the faults.

A Business Analysis 
We provide you with an analysis of the impact a disaster could have on your ability to conduct business - and a financial analysis of what it would cost.

A View of Your Critical Business Processes 
We document the processes that are most critical to your business. We identify the technical elements that support them, the risks to the process, and recommendations for reducing the risk.

Evidence for Your Decisions 
If you’re the CTO, you’ll be able to use the information we provide to determine where the faults in your system lie. You’ll be able to decide what needs to be done immediately and the best way to reduce the risks you face.

If you’re the CFO, you’ll be able to look at each critical business process and determine how much revenue is potentially at stake - and how your brand could potentially suffer - if the process fails. You’ll be able to see clearly what your choices are. The data we provide will give you the information you need to calculate how much time and money it will cost to reduce the risk to each process.

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Why VeriSign

Security isn’t just about security; it’s about your business. We focus not just on vulnerabilities, but on their threat to your business. Read about Our Approach - the foundation for all our work.

We help you stay competitive - we use our knowledge and experience to benchmark your risk against your industry. Read Industries We Work With to learn more about our experience in your industry.

Seventy percent of our business comes from existing customers. We focus on our relationship with our customers. Our goal is to be your trusted security advisor. Read about Our Expertise.

We’re a security company with a consulting practice, not a consulting company with a security practice. Read about The Value of VeriSign

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