Contingency Planning Case Study.

It was Friday night. All the employees had long since left for the day, except for a select group of senior staff who were crowded around the conference table with binders open and index cards in hand. Hedda Linn, who was facilitating the meeting, turned to Al Agostino, who was the acting incident manager for this meeting, and said, Its your turn.

Al looked at the next index card in his deck. The two words made him grimace: Power out. Hedda asked, How widespread and for how long? Beats me, Al replied. Thats all I know.

Al flipped through his tattered copy of the disaster recovery plan, finally settling on a page. He looked for the communications coordinator, Jeffrey Noak. Jeffrey, a more experienced security architect, was responsible for all communications during this disaster recovery practice session.

Okay, Jeff, he said. Please call the power company and ask how widespread the outage is. Jeff, who was reading the same binder page as Al, looked up. Okay, Ill let you know as

soon as I have an answer. Anything else?

Just a minute. As Al looked for the next step, Tana Stain forth, the second shift supervisor, said, Weve got about 45 minutes of battery time, but the generators need to be manually started. Im going to need power to maintain network operations.

Right! Al said. He turned to Meredith Isaacs, who represented the building management company that leased space to ATI. Can you get a team to the generator and get it going?

Meredith said, Okay. Im on it. We already turned on the heaters. It takes 10 to 15 minutes from a cold start, and in this weather its a very cold start. We need five to seven more min- utes before we can crank the motor, and three to four minutes after that we can generate power.

Everyone at the table laughed. The weather outside was 92 degrees and humid, but the disaster scenario they were rehearsing was a massive snowstorm impacting operations.

How long will the generators run? Al asked.

Meredith flipped a page in her binder and replied, Days. If we have to, we can siphon gas from employee vehicles! With the reserve tank, supplemented by gas from employee vehicles, we have plenty of fuel, provided the generator doesnt break down.

Whew! Thats a relief. Al smiled as he leaned back in his seat. OK, whats our next step? He glanced over at Hedda.

Hedda said, Good job everybody. Al, flip the next card.

Review the scenario above, and then consider these questions:

1-In the opening scenario, the group was practicing for a snow emergency. Other than power outage, what incident cards would you expect to see? For each of the incident cards you listed, what would be the proper response of the organization?

2-How often should an organization rehearsal of the contingency plans?

3-Who should coordinate rehearsal of the contingency plans? Why would that be the appropriate person?

4-Notice that Amanda Wilson was not at this rehearsal. Do you think it is important that the CIO, or even the CEO, participate in this kind of readiness exercises? Why or why not?

5-How can you make progress in contingency planning in the face of resistance from upper management?