SMS-DOC-087-3 Service Continuity Plan

Service Continuity Plan

ISO20000 Toolkit: Version 10 ©CertiKit

Service Continuity Plan

Implementation guidance The header page and this section, up to and including Disclaimer, must be removed from the final version of the document. For more details on replacing the logo, yellow highlighted text and certain generic terms, see the Completion Instructions document.

Purpose of this document The Service Continuity Plan sets out in detail how a particular strategy will be implemented in order to meet the defined requirements. It is intended to be used at the point at which an incident has occurred.

Areas of the standard addressed This document addresses the following sections of the ISO/IEC 20000 standard: •

8. Operation of the service management system o 8.7 Service assurance â–Ş 8.7.2 Service continuity management

General guidance The overall structure set out in this template may be used many times to document the various service continuity plans that you will need to cover all of the requirements and strategies you have identified within your organization. The example used is a simple recovery of onsite resources in the cloud.

For each procedure you should follow the outline headings contained within this template.

You may of course add additional headings where appropriate.

The intention should be to make these plans as usable as possible since they may be used for the first time in a situation where a disruptive event has occurred, possibly involving loss of life. Regular exercising as defined by the ISO/IEC 20000 standard will of course help in making them familiar to those who may need to invoke them.

Review frequency We would recommend that this document is reviewed annually or upon significant change to the area to which it relates.

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Document fields This document may contain fields which need to be updated with your own information, including a field for Organization Name that is linked to the custom document property “Organization Name”.

To update this field (and any others that may exist in this document): 1. Update the custom document property “Organization Name” by clicking File > Info > Properties > Advanced Properties > Custom > Organization Name.

2. Press Ctrl A on the keyboard to select all text in the document (or use Select, Select All via the Editing header on the Home tab).

3. Press F9 on the keyboard to update all fields.

4. When prompted, choose the option to just update TOC page numbers.

If you wish to permanently convert the fields in this document to text, for instance, so that they are no longer updateable, you will need to click into each occurrence of the field and press Ctrl Shift F9.

If you would like to make all fields in the document visible, go to File > Options > Advanced > Show document content > Field shading and set this to “Always”. This can be useful to check you have updated all fields correctly.

Further detail on the above procedure can be found in the toolkit Completion Instructions.

This document also contains guidance on working with the toolkit documents with an Apple Mac, and in Google Docs/Sheets.

Copyright notice Except for any specifically identified third-party works included, this document has been authored by CertiKit, and is ©CertiKit except as stated below. CertiKit is a company registered in England and Wales with company number 6432088.

Licence terms This document is licensed on and subject to the standard licence terms of CertiKit, available on request, or by download from our website. All other rights are reserved. Unless you have purchased this product you only have an evaluation licence.

If this product was purchased, a full licence is granted to the person identified as the licensee in the relevant purchase order. The standard licence terms include special terms relating to any third-party copyright included in this document.

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Disclaimer Please Note: Your use of and reliance on this document template is at your sole risk.

Document templates are intended to be used as a starting point only from which you will create your own document and to which you will apply all reasonable quality checks before use.

Therefore, please note that it is your responsibility to ensure that the content of any document you create that is based on our templates is correct and appropriate for your needs and complies with relevant laws in your country.

You should take all reasonable and proper legal and other professional advice before using this document.

CertiKit makes no claims, promises, or guarantees about the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of our document templates; assumes no duty of care to any person with respect its document templates or their contents; and expressly excludes and disclaims liability for any cost, expense, loss or damage suffered or incurred in reliance on our document templates, or in expectation of our document templates meeting your needs, including (without limitation) as a result of misstatements, errors and omissions in their contents.

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Service Continuity Plan

Version 1

DOCUMENT REF

SMS-DOC-087-3

VERSION

1

DATED

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DOCUMENT AUTHOR

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DOCUMENT OWNER

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Revision history VERSION

DATE

REVISION AUTHOR

SUMMARY OF CHANGES

Distribution NAME

TITLE

Approval NAME

Version 1

POSITION

SIGNATURE

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Contents 1

Purpose and scope ..................................................................................................... 9

2

Objectives ................................................................................................................ 10

3

Activation criteria and procedures ........................................................................... 11

4

3.1

As part of the incident response procedure ................................................................ 11

3.2

Localised activation.................................................................................................... 11

3.3

Activation procedure ................................................................................................. 11

Implementation procedure ...................................................................................... 13 4.1

Overview ................................................................................................................... 13

4.2

Recovery checklists .................................................................................................... 14

4.2.1 4.2.2

5

6

Business team recovery checklist .............................................................................................. 14 IT recovery checklist .................................................................................................................. 15

Roles, responsibilities and authorities ...................................................................... 16 5.1

IT recovery team ........................................................................................................ 16

5.2

Business recovery team.............................................................................................. 16

Communication requirements and procedures ......................................................... 18 6.1

Communication procedures ....................................................................................... 18

6.1.1 6.1.2 6.1.3 6.1.4 6.1.5

Means of communication .......................................................................................................... 18 Communication guidelines ........................................................................................................ 18 Internal communication ............................................................................................................ 18 External communication ............................................................................................................ 19 Communication with the media ................................................................................................ 19

7

Internal and external interdependencies and interactions ........................................ 20

8

Resource requirements ............................................................................................ 21

9

Information flow and documentation processes ...................................................... 22

10 Restoration of normal service .................................................................................. 23 10.1

Restoration to normal service checklists ..................................................................... 23

10.1.1 10.1.2

Business team checklist ........................................................................................................ 23 IT team checklist ................................................................................................................... 24

11 Appendix A: The Phonetic Alphabet ......................................................................... 25

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Tables Table 1: Business team recovery checklist ................................................................................... 14 Table 2: IT team recovery checklist ............................................................................................. 15 Table 3: IT recovery team members ............................................................................................ 16 Table 4: Business recovery team members ................................................................................. 16 Table 5: Plan interdependencies ................................................................................................. 20 Table 6: Plan external interactions.............................................................................................. 20 Table 7: Plan resource requirements .......................................................................................... 21 Table 8: Restoration to normal service - business team checklist ................................................. 23 Table 8: Restoration to normal service - IT team checklist ........................................................... 24

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1 Purpose and scope This document sets out a detailed plan to provide service continuity in the following situation: A disruptive incident has occurred that significantly affects the major IT systems of [Organization Name] making them unavailable to users. This may be due to hardware or software failure, loss of power, physical damage or some other reason.

The purpose of this plan is to recover the IT systems at an alternative location and to provide user access to them.

The procedures set out in this document should be used only as guidance when responding to an incident. The exact nature of an incident and its impact cannot be predicted with any degree of certainty and so it is important that a good degree of common sense is used when deciding the actions to take.

However, it is intended that the plan set out here will prove useful in allowing the correct actions to be taken more quickly and based on more accurate information.

All members of staff named in this document will be given a copy which they must have available when required.

Contact details will be checked and updated at least three times a year. Changes to contact or other relevant details that occur outside of these scheduled checks should be sent to service.continuity@organization.com as soon as possible after the change has occurred.

All personal information collected as part of the service continuity process and contained in this document will be used purely for the purposes of service continuity planning and is subject to relevant data protection legislation.

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2 Objectives The objectives of this service continuity plan are to: • • • • • • • • •

Recover the IT systems at an alternative location within a Response Time Objective of 48 hours Ensure that business operations can continue in limited form until IT systems are restored Provide a detailed description of how [Organization Name] will respond to a disruptive incident affecting the IT systems covered by this plan Set out who will respond to an incident and how the service continuity plan will be activated Describe the facilities that are in place to help with the implementation of the plan Define how decisions will be taken with regard to our response to an incident Explain how communication within the organization and with external parties will be handled Provide contact details for key people and external agencies and suppliers Define what will happen once the incident is resolved, and the team is stood down

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3 Activation criteria and procedures There are two main scenarios in which this plan may be activated: 1. In response to a major disruptive incident that has resulted in the organization’s Incident Response Procedure being activated 2. As a recovery for a smaller, more localised event which although not serious enough to result in activation of the Incident Response Procedure, requires action to address its impact

3.1 As part of the incident response procedure Notice will be received from the Incident Response Team (IRT) by telephone to the main plan owner (or deputy) if this plan is required to be activated. This will depend upon the incident that has occurred and the scope of its effects.

It is likely that this plan will be one of several that will be activated and co-ordination across the various plans will be needed.

3.2 Localised activation It will be up to the main plan owner (or deputy) to request of top management that the plan be activated and to inform them once this has been done.

3.3 Activation procedure Once the decision has been taken to activate the plan, the plan owner (or deputy) will contact the members of the recovery team using the contact details in the document Incident Response Contact Log. They will then be made aware of the nature of the incident and asked either to participate in an online meeting, or to assemble at the primary location specified below.

[Enter the address of the primary assembly location] In the event that the primary location is unavailable, the plan owner will request that the team assemble at the alternative location specified below.

[Enter the address of the alternative assembly location] An initial briefing will then be held at which the plan owner will:

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Explain why the plan has been activated Describe the impact of the incident Outline what needs to be achieved by the team Allocate tasks according to the checklists detailed in the plan Address any questions the team may have Set out the method and frequency of communication within the team

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4 Implementation procedure 4.1 Overview This service continuity plan uses cloud resources to replicate the failed on-premise servers and associated equipment. These resources, contained within a virtual private cloud, will include a number of virtual servers, database resources, storage and virtual networking configurations. These cloud facilities will be used to recover the following main business systems: • • •

SRV04 CRM server SRV08 Accounts Server SRV01 File and print server

The service provided in these circumstances will be limited to the following major IT services: • • • • • •

CRM Finance File serving Printing Payroll Internet access

The following IT services will not be available: • • • •

Phone system Data query tools Asset Management system Staff time tracking

An external disaster recovery service has been contracted to assist with the implementation of the plan and will work with the IT recovery team to ensure its success.

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4.2 Recovery checklists The following checklists should be used in conjunction with the more detailed procedures listed as appendices to this document.

4.2.1 Business team recovery checklist TASK

PROCEDURE REF

TARGET COMPLETION DATE/TIME

ACTUAL COMPLETION DATE/TIME

SIGNATURE

Confirm with Incident Response Team the likely elapsed time before an interim service will be available Communicate with Business Teams to set expectations Divert landline phones according to procedure at Appendix X Allocate manual tasks to appropriate teams Identify key users and ask them to confirm access once the IT Recovery Team has recovered sufficient IT systems Test systems once go-ahead given

by IT Recovery Team Table 1: Business team recovery checklist

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4.2.2 IT recovery checklist TASK

PROCEDURE REF

TARGET COMPLETION DATE/TIME

ACTUAL COMPLETION DATE/TIME

SIGNATURE

Invoke the Disaster recovery service (see Appendix Y) Go to the alternative site (if no Internet access is available at normal location) Establish Recovery Team rota and progress reporting schedule Meet with DR consultants to confirm requirements, plans and timings Confirm that the correct cloudbased backups are available In consultation with the DR consultants, configure the cloud environment Confirm that the cloud environment is ready for data restores Follow the procedures at Appendix Z to restore data to the relevant servers in the following order: • Finance server • CRM server • File and print server In parallel with the data restores, confirm that Internet access is available to key users Check access for key users to the cloud DR environment Complete data restore and perform connectivity testing Liaise with other Recovery Teams to perform user testing Once testing successful, inform Incident Response Team that systems are now available for use Table 2: IT team recovery checklist

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5 Roles, responsibilities and authorities 5.1 IT recovery team The IT Recovery Team consists of the following people:

NAME

TITLE

ROLE IN PLAN

Person A

IT Manager

Plan Owner

Person B

Server Support Technician

Server Specialist

Person C

Network Support Analyst

Network Specialist

Person D

Senior Software Technician

Application Specialist

Person E

Database Analyst

Database Specialist

Table 3: IT recovery team members

The IT Recovery Team is responsible for: • • •

Recovering servers, operating systems, networks and any other components upon which the applications are based Restoration of applications and data from backups and the restoration of LAN and WAN links, including liaison with external network suppliers.

Setup and configuration of the business applications once they have been restored to the cloud environment. This will involve liaison with third-party application support services.

5.2 Business recovery team The members of the Business Recovery Team will depend upon the areas affected and may include:

NAME

TITLE

ROLE IN PLAN

Person A

Sales Manager

Business Recovery

Person B

Financial Controller

Business Recovery

Person C

Buying Manager

Business Recovery

Person D

Operations Manager

Business Recovery

Table 4: Business recovery team members

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The Business Recovery Team is responsible for: • •

Managing the establishment of manual business procedures until such time as the required IT systems are recovered Testing of systems once the IT Team has given the go-ahead

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6 Communication requirements and procedures All requests for information from the media or other sources should be referred to the Incident Response Team by telephone on +xx xxx xxx xxxx.

6.1 Communication procedures It is vital that effective communications are maintained between all parties involved in the incident response.

6.1.1 Means of communication The primary means of communication during an incident will be telephone, both landline and mobile. In the event of telephone communications being unavailable provision may be made for the use of collaboration tools, such as Microsoft Teams.

Email should not be used unless telephone and equivalent alternatives are unavailable.

6.1.2 Communication guidelines The following guidelines should be followed in all communications: • • •

•

Be calm and avoid lengthy conversation Internal team members should refer information requests to the IRT If a phone call is answered by someone other than the contact: o Ask if the contact is available elsewhere o If they cannot be contacted leave a message to contact, you on a given number o Do not provide details of the Incident Always document call time details, responses and actions

All communications should be clearly and accurately recorded using the Message Log form.

6.1.3 Internal communication Calls to the command centre should use the main number which is +xx xxx xxx xxxx. Eight lines are available for incoming calls. If there is no answer a message may be left. If the call is urgent the caller should both leave a message and call back as well as trying alternative methods of communication if available, including team members’ mobile or cell phones.

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If leaving a message, ensure you mention: • • • • •

Your name Your number Your organization The name of the person the message is for The message

Details of the incident should not be given when leaving a message.

6.1.4 External communication Depending on the incident there may be a variety of external parties that will be communicated with during the course of the response. It is important that the information released to third parties is managed so that it is timely and accurate.

Calls and other contacts that are not from agencies directly involved in the incident response (such as the media) should be passed to the member of the IRT responsible for communications.

Emergency responders such as the police, fire and ambulance services will be well practised in incident handling and will have their own structured methods for communication and every effort should be made to comply with these. A listing of the phonetic alphabet used by the emergency services is at Appendix A.

6.1.5 Communication with the media In general, the communication strategy with respect to the media will be to issue regular updates via top management.

No members of staff should give an interview with the media unless this is pre-authorised by the IRT.

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7 Internal and external interdependencies and interactions This service continuity plan is part of a set of plans that has been created to address a variety of potential situations affecting [Organization Name].

Depending on the nature and scope of the incident that has occurred, it may be necessary to co-ordinate the execution of this plan with that of others.

The key service continuity plans that may have an interdependency with this plan are as follows:

DOC REF

PLAN TITLE

PLAN DESCRIPTION

PLAN OWNER

Plan001

Loss of Access to Building A

Move key business activities to alternate site

Person A

Plan003

Emergency home working

Allow key staff to access IT services from home

Person B

[List all relevant service continuity plans] Table 5: Plan interdependencies

Contact details for the above plan owners can be found in the document Internal Contact List. If the Incident Response Procedure has been activated, communication should initially be channelled through the IRT. This plan also depends upon the following external interactions:

EXTERNAL AGENCY

DEPENDENCY

COMMENTS

Emergency services

Permission to allow key staff to leave site and attend alternative site

Depends on type of incident

Disaster Recovery Supplier

Ability to deliver contracted resources within target timescale

May depend upon commitments to other customers in a widespread incident

[List all relevant external dependencies] Table 6: Plan external interactions

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8 Resource requirements The resources required to implement this service continuity plan are as follows:

RESOURCE

QUANTITY

SOURCE

COMMENTS

Virtual private cloud

1

AWS via DR supplier

Contract in place

AWS EC2 virtual servers

4

AWS via DR supplier

Contract in place

AWS Elastic File System

1

AWS via DR supplier

Contract in place

AWS S3 storage bucket

2

AWS via DR supplier

Contract in place

Elastic IP address

3

AWS via DR supplier

Contract in place

Security group

1

AWS via DR supplier

Contract in place

Cloud backups Elastic load balancer

Cloud storage supplier 2

Contract in place

Table 7: Plan resource requirements

These resources will need to be made available in order for the plan to be completed in a timely fashion. Requests for further resources (or issues with the identified resources) should be escalated to the Incident Response Team (if the Incident Response Procedure has been activated) or via normal management channels.

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9 Information flow and documentation processes During an incident response it is vital that information flows effectively around the response teams and that certain processes are followed to ensure that actions and messages are recorded correctly.

If the Incident Response Procedure has been activated, then regular updates on the situation should be given to the IRT. The frequency of these updates will be specified by the IRT Team Leader, although significant events should be communicated immediately (see section 6.1 – Communication Procedures).

Within the local recovery teams for this service continuity plan, the plan owner will decide how often progress updates should be given and is responsible for co-ordination between the IT Recovery and Business Recovery teams.

Actions that are decided upon as a result of progress meetings should be recorded using the template in the document Incident Response Action Log.

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10 Restoration of normal service Once this plan has been implemented and the services recovered at the alternate location, a decision will need to be made about how long this situation will be required for.

This will depend upon a number of factors including the extent of the damage to the primary site and how long it will be before the infrastructure required to house the servers is back in place.

Top management should decide when a restoration of normal service should be attempted based on advice from all involved parties. It is likely that this will be done over a period of low business activity e.g. a weekend or bank holiday.

The checklists on the following pages should be used to move the IT services back to their original location (or permanent replacement location). These checklists assume that the required hardware and network connectivity has been replaced and is fully operational at the primary site before work begins.

10.1 Restoration to normal service checklists The following checklists should be used in conjunction with the more detailed procedures listed as appendices to this document.

10.1.1 Business team checklist TASK

PROCEDURE REF

TARGET COMPLETION DATE/TIME

ACTUAL COMPLETION DATE/TIME

SIGNATURE

Confirm with IT team the likely length of any outages whilst the restoration takes place Communicate with Business Teams to set expectations Divert phones according to procedure at Appendix W Allocate manual tasks to appropriate teams if required Test systems once go-ahead given by IT Team Table 8: Restoration to normal service - business team checklist

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10.1.2 IT team checklist TASK

PROCEDURE REF

TARGET COMPLETION DATE/TIME

ACTUAL COMPLETION DATE/TIME

SIGNATURE

Inform the Disaster recovery service of the intention to swap back to on premise facilities Confirm readiness of on-premise environment Establish Team rota and progress reporting schedule Confirm cloud backups to be used Follow the procedures at Appendix V to restore data to the relevant servers in the following order: • Finance server • CRM server • File and print server Complete data restore and perform connectivity testing Liaise with other Recovery Teams to perform user testing Once testing successful, inform the business that systems are now available for use Table 9: Restoration to normal service - IT team checklist

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11 Appendix A: The Phonetic Alphabet In order to ensure that messages are understood correctly, the phonetic alphabet should be used when spelling out words and numbers.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

A: Alpha B: Bravo C: Charlie D: Delta E: Echo F: Foxtrot G: Golf H: Hotel I: India J: Juliet K: Kilo L: Lima M: Mike N: November O: Oscar P: Papa Q: Quebec R: Romeo S: Sierra T: Tango U: Uniform V: Victor W: Whiskey X: X-ray Y: Yankee Z: Zulu

• • • • • • • • • •

0: Zero 1: Wun 2: Two 3: Tree 4: Fower 5: Fife 6: Six 7: Seven 8: Ait 9: Niner

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