Disaster recovery teams can get all the help they can get in a crisis, and thankfully there are a growing number of tools that make the complex and life-saving process easier. Critical event management software is rapidly becoming an essential disaster response and recovery tool.
CEM products can help businesses recover quickly from critical events with a highly effective, integrated recovery approach. CEM software offers adopters a variety of power capabilities, including continuous monitoring, reporting, threat analysis and unified and targeted communications. A range of automated services deliver accurate and actionable intelligence quickly and efficiently.
“This information is communicated to the correct members of the crisis response team,” said Eric McGee, senior network engineer at TRG Datacenters. Critical event management software can quickly activate crisis response plans, allowing an organization to make more informed decisions. “Ultimately, disaster recovery [becomes] faster, more efficient and less expensive,” said McGee.
CEM is well suited for DR strategies. “It enables organizations to optimize their systems to facilitate rapid performance analysis, risk assessment, operations recovery and automation of event response tasks,” said Brad Cummins, Insurance Operator. Geek, an online insurance quote provider.
Powerful and flexible
Businesses can manage CEM activities from virtually any location on Earth, in most languages, and on almost any communication platform. “If something critical happens, people need to know what happened, how it affects them, and what part of the business they’re responsible for,” said Aaron Card, director of digital forensics and incident response at network service provider NTT.
Critical event management software can help organize and manage many different tasks, including:
These tools simplify the business continuity plan and make it easier to keep systems running during an interruption.
John ChapmanCo-Founder and Managing Director, MSP Blueshift
A modern DR strategy
With CEM, disaster recovery is simplified because all communication modes and scenarios are planned in advance. “Everyone who needs to be involved knows exactly what they need to do, and everyone has centralized, unified communications and situational awareness,” Card said. Major CEM vendors include Everbridge, AlertFind, CriticalArc, BlackBerry, and OnSolve.
Critical event management software is an essential part of any disaster recovery strategy, said Jan Chapman, co-founder and managing director of MSP Blueshift, an IT consulting firm serving small and medium-sized businesses. “These tools simplify the business continuity plan and make it easier to keep systems running during an interruption,” he said. “They can be configured to monitor and alert of any issues and allow users to run appropriate processes after an interruption.”
Solve information overload
One of the most difficult aspects of crisis management is gaining access to too much information. “When changes occur in your environment…it can be difficult to know what information needs to be recorded, as well as where that data needs to go so you can have quick access in an emergency,” said Ryan Fyfe , COO of Workpuls, an employee time tracking software provider. “As a result, many organizations struggle to understand how broad an incident may have been across the entire organization, creating productivity backlogs at a time when it is desperately needed.”
CEM software addresses this concern head-on by bringing order and management to what would otherwise be a chaotic situation.
Organizations working through different time zones, or who depend on specialized knowledge and expertise to save lives, must be able to communicate with each other at all times, Fyfe said. “Critical event management software simplifies disaster recovery by giving organizations the ability to bring their teammates together for round-the-clock coverage of operations.”
