Organizations face many challenges when designing disaster recovery plans such as keeping employees productive during a time of disaster and assuring the identities of remote users attempting to access corporate resources during disruptions. Often times these challenges appear to be conflicting; productivity vs. security. RSA SecurID® has been used as part of Business Continuity planning for years allowing organizations to maintain strong security polices (two-factor authentication for remote access) to prevent security breaches while allowing remote employees to access sensitive corporate information via VPNs or via secure web access.

In addition to providing RSA SecurID authentication for employees, companies should consider the following actions when developing a business continuity plan:

1. Identify business critical processes and rank in order of importance.
2. Identify essential people needed to continue business processes and any interdependencies you have on others.
3. Forecast and plan for employee absences for pandemic planning due to personal illness, family member illness, school/business closures etc.
4. Communicate to employees the business continuity plan and explain expectations for employees.
5. Provide emergency help desk or corporate hotline contact information.
6. Evaluate remote access capacity and upgrade if necessary to support employee telecommunicating and remote customer access.
7. Inform end-users how to access corporate resource remotely via VPN or Outlook Web Access.
8. Educate end-users about the importance of security and demonstrate the use of SecurID two-factor authentication.
9. Deploy RSA SecurID software token applications to end-user devices in preparation for deploying seed records at the point of plan implementation.

For more information, view the "Business Pandemic Influenza Planning Checklist" published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. http://www.pandemicflu.gov/plan/pdf/businesschecklist.pdf