Cornerstone's Business Continuity Planning Services focus on preparing your entire organization for continuity of operations in the event of a disaster that affects one or more of your business units (including branches). The purpose of the engagement is to increase the level of preparedness within your business units. Cornerstone looks at the organization and quality of your Business Continuity Plan at the enterprise level. We assist you in creating a plan that is responsive to the needs to get business units back in operation quickly with the necessary resources. Our goal is to involve the personnel in your organization that are responsible for business continuity to the extent that they will be able to maintain and test the plan in future years.

We use processes advocated by the Disaster Recovery Institute International (DRI) to review the plan and to bring it into conformance with best practices. The four major steps of this service offering are:

• Enterprise Wide Risk Assessment - In this step, Cornerstone uses our knowledge of the complexity and size of your institution to define the likely threats to your organization. Using our methodology we work with key members of your business units to devise a composite threat assessment by business area. To complete this part of the engagement, we assign probabilities to the defined risks and review the list and probabilities with the management of each business area.
  
  
• Enterprise Wide Business Impact Analysis - In this step, Cornerstone works further with key business personnel to determine the resources they would need at time of disaster and the prioritization of restoration of their key business functions so that we can determine recovery time objectives (RTOs).
  
  
• Design and Construction of the Business Continuity Plan - Based on the RTOs and the resource plans for the individual business units, Cornerstone develops (or modifies) your Business Continuity Plan to accommodate recovery of the key functions of the business units. A key component of the plan will be the establishment of command and control processes including: Escalation Procedures; Emergency Response Team Operations; Vendor Contact Lists; Recovery Plans; etc. The major deliverable of this phase is an Enterprise Wide Business Continuity Plan.
  
  
• Testing and Maintenance of the Business Continuity Plan - Key to maintaining an effective Business Continuity Plan is ongoing testing and maintenance. Cornerstone assists you in developing a testing schedule of table top exercises and assists in performing the first series of tests. Roles and responsibilities will be reviewed and recommendations made for ongoing upkeep and reissue of the plan.
  
  

Cornerstone assists you in developing a Business Continuity Plan that works in coordination with your IT Disaster Recovery Plan to ensure your organization can run uninterrupted in the face of adverse situations. Based on our knowledge of what situations have been affecting our customer base and the banking industry, we can help you prepare your organization before an event happens.

Return to Risk Management Services