An article in IT Pro Portal takes a lighthearted look at the lessons that can be learned from blockbuster movies about your company’s own disaster response and business continuity plans. Chris Butler, lead principal consultant, resilience & security at Sungard Availability Services, uses three movies to illustrate some flaws to consider with traditional business continuity options.
From Gravity: A movie about astronauts getting stranded in space, the film teaches companies to not leave their remote workers feeling isolated and alone. “This is an extreme example of how people are at their most vulnerable when they are isolated, and can even start to panic or act irrationally when cut off from the rest of their team,” writes Butler. Keeping key information — such as emergency contact chains and backup communications systems — on hand and accessible to employees is crucial in case of disaster.
From Airplane!: An entire plane full of people, including the pilots, are incapacitated with virulent food poisoning. To ensure that chaos doesn’t ensue in cases where the entire team is compromised, clear leadership structure and training staff organization-wide is important. “To make this work, a bottom-up approach to enterprise resilience is crucial, taking into account both operational and human elements of business continuity,” writes Butler.
From Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs and Speed: Two very different movies with one commonality — technology beyond the protagonists’ control. Along with building redundancy into the hardware and software being used in a company’s disaster recovery plan, training is again critical for all employees. “Organizations shouldn’t rely on a single ‘hero’ to swoop in and fix everything,” writes Butler. “Sharing the burden of knowledge relating to the ins and out of IT infrastructure allows teams to react faster to disruption and ensure the resilience and availability of their products, services and operations.”
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