A couple of areas that tend to be overlooked are 1. employees and 2. partners and suppliers. Does your organization’s BC/DR plan include procedures for employees? Perhaps the recent threat of the Swine Flu or its politically correct H1N1 name have prompted organizations to take a closer look at the workforce and identify those personnel responsible for mission critical functions.  Some have taken steps to ensure that these employees could continue to do their jobs–even if forced to work from remote locations for long periods of time.  But what about an organization’s partners and suppliers–how well are they protected and how fast could they recover? How would you find out? In either case,  finding out this information could result in quite lengthy and manual processes.  Wouldn’t be fun the first time you did it and probably wouldn’t get much easier every time after that.

I recently talked with SunGard about some new software modules from their Continuity Management Solutions that are specifically designed to address these needs. Their Vendor and Workforce Assessment modules will allow organizations to quickly create online surveys that can be deployed to all employees and vendors via e-mail. Results are collected and provide insight into gaps that exist and need to be corrected. Examples of these gaps include an employee that doesn’t have a laptop and can’t work from home during severe weather or a supplier that has inadequate protection plans that could jeopardize your organization’s ability to deliver goods or services. Once set up, it could be done on an annual basis to ensure accuracy and that the proper remediation has taken place. Or it can identify a continued weak link in your supply chain that needs to be replaced.

If your organization doesn’t know how well your partners are protected, you may want to consider checking out this software–which can also be consumed via software as a service.

Read Bob’s other blog entries at Data Center Continuum.