Business Continuity Protection

Business Continuity Protection (BCP) includes the need to maintain corporate records, both tangible and intangible, to support the continuity of business operations in the event of a disruption. Such protection could include the storing of digital data in an archive for business disruption or disaster recovery purposes. The security and confidentiality of such data is also important. Its archiving should also not be burdensome on the operating information technology applications or networks.

For example, the important asset of a data historian is a large data base of important, non-reproducible data that is necessary to the successful continuity of plant operations. One approach would be to use high-speed one-way transfer products to copy the data, or entire data base, to a secure location. Utilizing a dedicated one-way link at each network boundary crossing precludes any unauthorized access to either the sending network or the receiving network. This “off-site” storage procedure would contribute to restoration of important applications and satisfy compliance with overall security and corporate control requirements.

Another example would be the archiving of the process plan computer system network configuration to a secure location by “sweeping’ the network periodically to gather the configuration information and moving it through a one-way link to insure no corruption could occur on the sending network.