Verizon Business expands services

Verizon Business has expanded its portfolio of business continuity professional services to address gaps commonly found in existing continuity programs, according to TMCnet.

According to company officials, the new consulting services, immediately available in the US, as well as countries in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, focus on business applications, regulatory compliance, training and awareness, and testing.

"Globalisation, round-the-clock service delivery and ongoing operational risks caused by natural and man-made events, including natural disasters, pandemics and online security threats, continue to drive strong business continuity adoption," says Kerry Bailey, senior vice-president of global services, Verizon Business.

Some organisations think that a huge, complex, all-singing, all-dancing relocation test is the only way to prove their business continuity plan, but it's not, according to ITProPortal.

This type of test is often costly, difficult to arrange and can be fraught with risk and therefore it is usually done infrequently, if at all.

There's more than one way to test a business continuity plan and the different types of testing or exercising are many and varied and include callout tests, to ensure contact details are correct and the callout process actually works.

Symantec has released the results of its fifth annual IT disaster recovery (DR) survey, showing what is to blame for mounting DR pressures, states HardwareZone.

The survey demonstrates rising DR pressures on organisations are caused by soaring downtime costs and more stringent IT service level requirements to mitigate risk to the business.

The average cost of executing or implementing disaster recovery plans for each downtime incident according to respondents in Asia-Pacific and Japan is $150 000.