In developing an overall security plan for an industrial organization, one must be attentive to many considerations. The best place to begin is with a business continuity plan (BCP) and a disaster recovery plan (DR). The reason is simple: the goal of BCP/DR planning is to provide for an organization's ongoing operations in the face of a potential disturbance or disruption in its service. Whereas business continuity planning seeks to promote the continuous, smooth operation of the organization's usual operations, disaster recovery presupposes some sort of disruption in normal operations inasmuch as it is directed toward "recovery" efforts. Whereas BCP helps prevent and anticipate a disaster or unfavorable incident in advance, Disaster Recovery (DR) is the strategy of planned recuperation from a negative incident of some magnitude. The event might be something huge, such as an earthquake or the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, or something small, such as malfunctioning software caused by a computer virus. Business continuity planning suggests a more all over approach to making sure you can keep making money, not only after a natural calamity but also in the event of smaller disruptions including illness or departure of key staffers, supply chain partner problems or other challenges that businesses face from time to time. Despite these distinctions, the two terms are often married under the acronym BC/DR because of their many common considerations.
The development of a complete and adequate BCP/DR plan depends on the industry the organization serves, the type and complexity of organization, and the number of locations and employees, among other factors. The specific industrial organization under consideration here is The Aerospace Corporation. This company is a FFRDC company, which means that it is a Federally Funding Research and Development Center. This industry has many exposures to safety and security ris...