We rely on our IT systems and services for many of our daily operations at the university. But how can we ensure that we can continue with our operations when these IT systems and services are unavailable?
It’s good to think about this before the problem arises.
Aarhus University has made every effort to ensure that staff and students always have access to the IT support they require, but unforeseeable events can result in IT systems and services being unavailable for a period of time.
In the event of an IT systems failure at AU, an emergency response procedure is initiated that deals with the technical issues. But for the most important IT systems and services, it can help to have local continuity plans in place for how individual units/departments can continue their critical operations and processes during these periods of IT downtime.
There is no formal requirement to document your answers to the following questions, but we recommend that you consider them when designing your business continuity plan.
Once the IT systems and services are restored, it’s important to return to digital operations in a way that ensures no information gets lost. So you need to have a procedure in place for how your unit/department moves from the business continuity plan back to digital operations.
It’s important that your business continuity plan is reviewed and improved on an ongoing basis, so follow up on what worked and what didn’t work while the IT systems were down.
Depending on the system classification, you may be required to conduct a business continuity plan as well as a risk assessment:
Based on assessments of risk, we recommend that individual units consider whether it could be beneficial to have supplementary business continuity plans at local level.