Are you prepared for the unexpected?

Natural disasters. Terrorist attacks. Viruses. System failures. The list of threats to business continuity is growing. In today’s networked economy, where communication and data are vital, even a few hours of service disruption can have devastating results.

With BT’s holistic approach to security and business continuity management, you can maximise your organisation’s operational resilience and reduce the impact on your bottom line. 

Our experience is your best defence

BT offers comprehensive Business Continuity Solutions, protecting you against a wide variety of threats that can disrupt your critical operations and services.

We take on the complexity inherent in business continuity planning by combining our professional services expertise, experience and methodology with best-in-class “high availability” and disaster recovery solutions. To ensure a full service and global coverage for our clients, we also cultivate key strategic alliances, reducing risk and protecting your enterprise if disaster strikes.

We will work with you to identify and anticipate potential threats to your organisation, designing and implementing dependable back-up systems and providing a single point of contact – even when multiple service contracts are in place. Our aim is to provide a resilient and highly available networked IT infrastructure that will help your business thrive in the 21st century.

A focused process

To survive a crisis, you need an approach to business continuity that combines strong operational resilience, effective recovery processes, and an experienced incident management team – all underpinned by rigorous and tested continuity plans. For example, we implemented a comprehensive business continuity programme for a major UK City Council, which guarantees the provision of a backup communications system within 12 hours of a failure.

BT has also undertaken all aspects of business continuity planning for a global oil and gas company. This includes business impact assessments, identifying recovery strategies, implementing the optimal solution and writing, and testing the continuity plans.

With our depth of experience, BT can tailor continuity solutions to meet your specific business needs. We focus on helping you to address your precise risks, and enabling you to quickly resume operations in the event of a disruption.

Is your business vulnerable?

Businesses and organisations of all sizes are highly dependent on their networked IT infrastructure, as well as intangible assets such as customer and financial data. All are highly vulnerable to external and internal attacks. Having a comprehensive business continuity plan is essential to protect your organisation’s key assets – critical processes, systems, proprietary information and people. 

A trusted partner

The depth and breadth of our experience means that BT:

• Has one of the largest dedicated security and business continuity practices in the world.
• Has over 30 members and certified practitioners of the Business Continuity Institute (BCI) and the Disaster Recovery Institute International (DRII).
• Was one of the first UK-based organisations to be awarded certification to the best practice BS2599-2 2007 business continuity standard.
• Has invested over £10 billion in our new resilient and highly available 21st Century IP Network (21CN).
• Is a key provider of the UK’s Critical National Infrastructure, and manages the secure data networks for 90 per cent of the UK’s major financial institutions.
  

Individual solutions to individual problems

BT’s customised contingency plans bring you the benefits of:

Holistic business continuity
BT provides complete operational resilience and risk management by addressing all the layers of your business environment, including: critical processes, networks, platforms, data and applications, as well as your people.

International compliance
Our services are scalable, recoverable, and secure, and designed to meet industry, governmental and global compliance requirements.

Operational resilience
By helping you clearly define and prioritise your business requirements, we can build availability and resilience into the continuity plan from the outset. This will keep your enterprise operational on a global scale, enabling you to resume critical business processes and functions rapidly in the event of a crisis.

Verified continuity
While a business continuity plan may appear on paper to meet the needs of the organisation, only regular rehearsing and testing will ensure that it delivers the desired results. That’s why BT rigorously tests every aspect and scenario of the Business Continuity solution we customise for your enterprise.

Meeting your needs

BT Business Continuity Solutions provide:

• Consulting and Professional Services – Business Continuity Quickstart, planning, testing, maintenance and audit services.
• Data Centre Services – a secure data centre environment for the hosting, management, back-up, storage and archiving of mission-critical applications, data and IT services. This also facilitates world-class “high availability” solutions.
• Resilient Network Services – flexible and highly resilient bandwidth on demand, including converged networks.
• Voice, Workplace and IT Recovery Services – voice, data and IT services and workplace recovery should your primary facilities become unavailable.
• Incident Response and Crisis Management –  crisis communications solutions that support organisations through warning and informing stakeholder groups during crises and incidents.
• Mobility and Workforce Resilience –  provision of secure mobile communications, flexible working and home working solutions
  

Substantial benefits

The BT approach covers every aspect of business continuity, from surveying existing measures to recommending and implementing new systems. This means that you can:

• Benchmark against best practice measures and industry standards (e.g. BS25999).
• Build a compelling business case for introducing a business continuity programme.
• Resume business-critical processes quickly so that downtime is kept at absolute minimum.
• Minimise losses in the event of a crisis.
• Strengthen your competitive position when approaching potential clients.

Safety first

In the digital economy, networked IT infrastructure is the backbone of any business. Ensuring operation and protecting against loss of data should be an integral part of any business strategy.

Organisations should have a clear perspective on the cost-effectiveness and efficiency of networked high availability and recovery services. These services need to be part of an enterprise-wide business continuity solution, protecting both applications and infrastructure.

Our world-class credentials

BT has consistently demonstrated leadership in providing security solutions for our customers. The company:

• Was the first UK commercial organisation to be accredited to the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST), the influential computer security body with members across the globe.
• Has one of the largest dedicated business continuity and security practices in the world, with over 1300 full-time staff.
• Provides a flexible, modular Business Continuity Management framework, compliant with best practice BS25999 standards.
• Is recognised as a leader and visionary in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for 2006 European Hosting (includes data centre facilities, resilient network, infrastructure, back-up/recovery and storage).
• Backs up over 200 terabytes of data for internal and external customers each week.

A holistic approach

BT looks at business continuity from an enterprise perspective to determine how incidents impact the business, not just its systems. Our approach consists of six distinct stages:

• Project start-up and management – obtain management commitment and define the scope of the project.
• Business impact analysis – identify the organisation’s mission and business-critical functions; determine risks and business impacts that could jeopardise ongoing viability.
• Recovery strategy development – appraise recovery alternatives and propose cost-effective strategic solutions.
• Recovery plan development and implementation – implement agreed contingency planning strategies; develop and document the plan.
• Implementation and testing of Business Continuity Plans (BCP) – select contingency planning strategies and test the BCP to ensure completeness and viability.
• Implementing awareness and process measurement – execute specific recovery and continuity activities.

BT’s secure and dependable infrastructure supports our Business Continuity Solutions.  This includes ultra-fast and scalable bandwidth to transport data; hosting centres to mirror, store and retrieve information; optical connectivity; and a full data storage portfolio.

The Business Continuity Quickstart offers a low-risk, low-cost way to find out what BT can do for your organisation.  Our team will help you to benchmark current measures, present suggestions for moving forward and explain more about our methodology.

Safeguarding vital services

Business Continuity Solutions for global networks start at a physical level.  You need to be sure that your network is resilient to disasters such as fires, explosions, floods or earthquakes.

In December 2006, a major earthquake struck Taiwan. This meant that KT Corporation, South Korea's largest telecommunications service provider, suffered a significant outage on its fibre optic cables in the southern seas. The earthquake took down telecommunications services in Hong Kong, China, South Korea and Japan.

BT's network resilience, based on the dual core 21st Century network, ensured that our customers experienced no loss of service. Our resilient network and business continuity planning meant that although a few customers had to deal with some network delays and latency, BT kept their businesses running without failure throughout this natural disaster.

Long-term benefits

To help ensure that your business is resilient enough to withstand the pressures of today’s business climate, BT will work with you to identify, manage and reduce the operational risks that confront your organisation on a daily basis.

BT’s comprehensive portfolio offers a range of services to help you increase availability, business continuity and security across your networked IT infrastructure, not only reducing risk but also improving your flexibility, agility and operational strength.

For every project, we evaluate your IT environment with the goal of delivering solutions that provide reliability, high performance and high availability. Our services are scalable, recoverable and secure, and are designed to meet industry, governmental and global compliance requirements.