The Scenario
A 350-person SA financial services firm needs a business continuity plan that satisfies its regulator (FSCA) and its insurers. The CIO wants tiered RTO and RPO targets per business function, a defended cost, and a clear difference between what the company recovers in 4 hours, 24 hours, and 72 hours.
The Brief
Produce a complete business continuity plan. Tier business functions by recovery priority, define RTO and RPO per tier, design the technical solution per tier, and present the cost.
Deliverables
- A business impact analysis (BIA) listing the top 15 business functions, their tier (1 to 3), and the rationale for placement
- A tier definition table showing for each tier: RTO, RPO, technical solution (hot standby, warm replica, restore-from-backup), and the cost band
- A recovery runbook outline showing the first 24 hours of recovery: who decides what is invoked, who communicates, and the parallel workstreams
- A funding case summary suitable for an exco audience showing the cost of the plan versus the cost of an unplanned outage
Submission Guidance
The mistake junior IT people make is putting everything in Tier 1. Real BIA work forces uncomfortable trade-offs: not every system is hot-standby-worthy. Show that you can have the conversation with a CFO about the cost difference between 4-hour RTO and 24-hour RTO.
Submit Your Work
Your submission is graded against the rubric on the right. If you pass, you get a public Badge URL you can share on LinkedIn. There is no draft save, so work offline first and paste your finished response here.