Transport Service Provider Buys Insurance

A high profile disaster leading to the flooding of their communications and computing rooms, led to a half-day outage of an Australian city’s transport services.

The transport service provider lacked a formal Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) / Business Continuity Plan (BCP) for their IT business and operational systems. The flooding of its communications and computing rooms was a costly experience that brought awareness to a compelling need for DR and BC planning.

The company subsequently engaged SMS to conduct an end-to-end analysis of requirements, to propose appropriate strategies to address the risks identified and to provide a working DRP for their IT department.

SMS applied its proprietary COBRA2 methodology to Business Impact Analysis, risk assessment and strategy preparation.

SMS used the SMS Cobra2 framework, which describes a three-phased approach: Discovery, Strategy and Implementation. During the Discovery phase, we conducted a comprehensive Business Impact Analysis and Risk Assessment through a review of existing work and a stakeholder interview approach. We then delivered a suitable strategy document, which highlighted risks to be mitigated against, recovered from or accepted.

SMS documented a complete DRP for the IT department, together with a costed implementation strategy to address the key organisational risks.

The SMS strategy proposed encompassed the establishment of a 24 x 7 hit standby site and replication of core processing systems. Additionally it made a number of procedural and management recommendations to assist the transport service provider to reduce its risk and exposure to 3rd party and related party systems.

A strategy that is projected to deliver close to zero down-time in transport operations from technology issues.

The SMS deliverables and recommendations were accepted by the CIO and the rest of the organisational executive leadership team. The solutions proposed, where applicable, are being implemented.