Achilles for IT

Business Issues

Elimination of risk to business activities is a high priority activity for any company and although impossible to eliminate all risk, it is possible to reduce the likelihood of problematic events and limit the impact on commercial operations. It is because it is possible to identify key threats to sustaining IT services and then implement protections and procedures that reduce or negate the actual or perceived threat. However to achieve this it requires that a company maintains a successful reduction in its business risk through a continual programme of risk management.

Major catastophic events have increased awareness with CIOs to ensure that IT services can be maintained across such events. Nonetheless to achieve this objective it is no longer sufficient to fulfil disaster recovery plans with data backups alone.

Achilles for IT

The Achilles for IT is a formal assessment and gap analysis of an organisation's IT infrastructure and service delivery ability against internationally defined and accepted standards and considered best practices for business continuity and disaster recovery.

As a compliment to your corporate business continuity planning processes the Achilles for IT delivers a comprehensive risk assessment and analysis of the existing IT business resilience and continuity strategy. Assessing both the installed technology and operational processes, assessment identifies potential threats to service delivery, provides strategies for addressing identified threats and evaluates the recovery priorities and the ability of the IT function to sustain service delivery in the event of a disaster.

Achilles recommendations can enhance service delivery, resilience to disruption, raise awareness of continuity and recovery responsibilities and increase preparedness for recovery.

The Achilles is conducted through the collection of information on the existing IT infrastructure together with a complimentary series of interviews with relevant members of the IT function, including Operations, Service Delivery and personnel charged with service continuity and disaster recovery. Full account of existing business continuity plans, BCP, and IT disaster recovery plans are incorporated within its assessment.

Following analysis a report is completed and presented delivering an objective assessment of your Business Risk Exposure, highlighting priority areas of the IT environment that require management attention.

Our non-invasive approach consulting approach enables our experience and insight to be applied to your individual environment in accordance with the specific requirements of your business continuity and disaster recovery strategy.

Achilles for IT Delivers

1. Assessment and gap analysis of existing IT environment and service delivery capability against international standardsand recognised best practice.
2. Assessesment of the current readiness and responsiveness of the IT organisation and infrastructure to any potential threat to service delivery.
3. Review of the IT recovery priorities, available resources and procedures in order to ascertain the most cost-effective methods of response to each identified threat.
4. Pragmatic cost-effective and workable recommendations to enhance IT resilience and reduce the exposure of the business to IT-related risk.

Benefits

Regular independent assessment of your IT preparedness to protect against potential denial of IT service to the business, is accepted best practice and contributes significantly to ensuring continued resilience and recovedy capability. Further significant benefits include:

1. Increased insight into the risks inherent in the IT service delivery capability and their potential affect on the business.
2. Identification of opportunities to increase resilience and preparedness against identified threats.
3. Business-oriented priority approach to programme of improvement.
4. Knowledge transfer and awareness of repeatable processes and best practices for disaster recovery and business continuity.
5. Establishes a baseline for future assessment activities.

Register with us to find out how the Achilles assessment can enhance the resilience and business continuity preparedness of the business.