Law firmIrwin Mitchellplans to be among the
first organisations to attain formal certification under aBritish Standardforbusiness continuity.
The firm said it was responding to an increasing demand from
corporate clients for business continuity assurances for their
business partners.
"It is one thing to say you have business continuity plans in
place, but to have them externally and independently audited and
certified against current best practice, that is what clients are
really interested in," said Gary Thomas, head of IT operations at
Irwin Mitchell.
The British Standards Institute, which developed the BS25999
standard, is due to publish its certification requirements later
this month. The first accreditations are expected in mid 2008.
Irwin Mitchell is consulting with SunGard Availability Services
in preparation for certification, but Peter Sloane, business
improvement manager at Irwin Mitchell, said most of the groundwork
was already done as the firm had used the initial specification of
the standard and the later code of practice to develop its disaster
recovery plan.
"This made us look at our incident management plans, which
involved assessing possible disasters, which led to formalising our
business continuity plans, including training, testing exercises,
and improving existing back-up and recovery systems to support it,"
he said.
He said that although certification would require more testing,
training and documenting, a successful implementation during the
June floods proved that the plan and the principles of the standard
were sound.
The ground floor of Irwin Mitchell's Sheffield office was
flooded, but the firm set up a makeshift call centre and relocated
to SunGard's recovery centre to enable the firm to continue
business as usual the next day.
potential bs25999 benefits
● Improved operations management
● Lower insurance premiums
● Increased confidence in the business
● Demonstrates care of employees
● Helps safeguard the reputation of the company