Risk Assessment Assignment

The following is the scenario you are to use for your individual analysis assignment and your team project.

Anita Diamond was hurriedly leaving the office of John Newman, the Chairman and CEO of OptiPress Corporation.  As the newly hired CIO she had not expected her second meeting with Mr. Newman would be so soon or under such disturbing circumstances.  Mr. Newman had been waiting for her arrival in this morning with the news of the fire at Host Point, Inc. last week.  Host Point provides web hosting services for a number of companies in the Philadelphia area including the local Philadelphia Eagle’s Arena Football Team to which Mr. Newman has an ownership stake. The fire had been devastating, turning the 75 servers in the web hosting data center into a mass of melted plastic and metal.  “It has been seven days and the Eagle’s website is still down and so are our opening day ticket sales.” Mr. Newman had stated in the call that brought Anita to the 8:00 am meeting.  “What would we do if something like that happened here?” he asked.

Anita asked her Executive Assistant to grab a copy of the company’s Business Recovery Plan so she could bring it to her meeting with Mr. Newman.  It only took about two minutes for Mr. Newman to realize that the plan was written before the merger with Bright Mail Marketing three years ago, which had more than doubled the size of OptiPress.  Not only did it fail to cover the company in full but the changes to the business practices and support systems, in particular the move to the Internet and World Wide Web, were not even discussed.  Further, while the plan was strong on Disaster Recovery for situations such as that at Host Point, it was almost silent on Business Continuity.  The one advantage to being on the job for four weeks was she was not the focus of Mr. Newman’s ire.  On the other hand she quickly realized that she was not knowledgeable enough of the company’s operations to update this plan without significant involvement from the various departments in the company. 

OptiPress Corporation is a mail marketing /web advertising company operating seven different facilities in three states. The company has over 2000 clients of varying sizes and portfolios.  Mail marketing involves mailing and distribution of advertising as well as promotional products ordered through the mail, television or Internet.  Net income last year exceeded 100 million dollars for the first time in spite of the economic situation.  There are currently about 6200 employees, with 800 headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Its largest operations are in Cleveland, Ohio and Annapolis, Maryland with 3100 and 1800 employees in each area respectively.  The merger with Bright Mail occurred 27 months ago.  Although financial data has been directed to the headquarters datacenter, operational data is still retained at three locations in Philadelphia, Annapolis, and Cleveland.  Each facility is supported by the geographically closest data center with three in Pennsylvania, two in Maryland and two in Ohio.

Over the past two years the major focus of the IT department has been to standardize the IT infrastructure and software across the company.  Human Resources, Accounting and Payroll have been centralized in Philadelphia as have been all of the web server operations.  Marketing and Operations have been standardized but data are unique at each hub location where data centers reside.  Select data for the Corporate MIS is automatically fed from the hubs.  Although there were a few hurdles in implementing the current environment, for the past three months things have been working quite smoothly which probably in part resulted in Anita’s predecessor’s decision to retire.  Anita had been looking to further consolidate Marketing and Operations before this latest discussion with Mr. Newman who highlighted a much more pressing issue, the disaster recovery planning.

At the 2 PM Executive Council Meeting, this became the number one issue on Mr. Newman’s agenda. Anita was asked what she needed to make this happen.  She would assign her sharpest project manager to lead a focus group to update the Company’s Disaster Recovery Plan and to develop an effective Business Continuity Plan given the current and projected future operational environment and needs.  She highlighted the need for the executives of each department to assign a knowledgeable expert to assist in this effort.  She made it clear that these individuals will need to be empowered to obtain the support necessary from their counterparts anywhere in the organization.   Mr. Newman endorsed Anita’s initiative and informed the Council that next month’s key agenda item would be to review the completed plan for implementation costs and schedule.

06/28/2017