Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan
Purpose
The purpose of this business continuity plan is to prepare AlignAI Labs, Inc. in the event of service outages caused by factors beyond our control (e.g., natural disasters, man-made events), and to restore services to the widest extent possible in a minimum time frame.
Scope
All AlignAI Labs, Inc. IT systems that are business critical. This policy applies to all employees of AlignAI Labs, Inc. and to all relevant external parties, including but not limited to AlignAI Labs, Inc. consultants and contractors.
The following scenarios are excluded from the BC/DR plan scope:
Loss of availability for a production hosting service provider (i.e., Supabase)Loss of availability of AlignAI Labs, Inc. satellite offices (these will be considered incidents)
In the event of a loss of availability of a hosting service provider, the CTO will confer with the IT Manager and Head of Engineering to determine an appropriate response strategy.
Policy
In the event of a major disruption to production services and a disaster affecting the availability and/or security of the AlignAI Labs, Inc. office, senior managers and executive staff shall determine mitigation actions.
A disaster recovery test, including a test of backup restoration processes, shall be performed on an annual basis.
Continuity of information security shall be considered along with operational continuity.
In the case of an information security event or incident, refer to the Incident Response Plan.
Alternate Work Facilities
If the AlignAI Labs, Inc. office becomes unavailable due to a disaster, all staff shall work remotely from their homes or any safe location.
Communications and Escalation
Executive staff and senior managers should be notified of any disaster affecting AlignAI Labs, Inc. facilities or operations.
Communications shall take place over any available regular channels, including Slack, email, and Jira.
Key contacts shall be maintained on the on-call schedule and key contacts: Key Contacts.
Roles and Responsibilities
Role Responsibility
IT Manager The IT Manager shall lead BC/DR efforts to mitigate losses and recover the corporate network and information systems.
Department Manager
Each department head shall be responsible for communications with their departmental staff and any actions needed to maintain continuity of their business functions. Departmental heads shall communicate regularly with executive staff and the IT Manager.
Managers Managers shall be responsible for communicating with their direct reports and providing any needed assistance for staff to continue working from alternative locations.
CTO The VP of Global Support, in conjunction with the CEO and CFO shall be responsible for any external and client communications regarding any disaster or business continuity actions that are relevant to customers and third parties.
CTO The VP of Engineering, in conjunction with the VP of Global Support, shall be responsible for leading efforts to maintain continuity of AlignAI Labs, Inc. services to customers during a disaster.
HR Manager
The CHRO shall be responsible for internal communications to employees as well as any action needed to maintain physical health and safety of the workforce. The CHR Oshall work with the IT Manager to ensure continuity of physical security at the AlignAI Labs, Inc. office.
Continuity of Critical Services
Procedures for maintaining continuity of critical services in a disaster can be found in Appendix A.
Recovery Time Objectives RTO) and Recovery Point Objects RPO) can be found in Appendix B.
Strategy for maintaining continuity of services can be seen in the following table:
KEY BUSINESS Process continuity STRATEGY
Customer Production)Service Delivery Rely on AWS availability commitments and SLAs
IT Operations Not dependent on HQ. VPN is redundant between HQ and Colo. Critical data is backed up to alternate locations.
Email Utilize Gmail and its distributed nature, rely on Google’s standard service level agreements.
Finance, Legal and HR All systems are vendor-hosted Saa S applications.
Sales and Marketing All systems are vendor-hosted Saa S applications.
Plan Activation
This BC/DR shall be automatically activated in the event of the loss or unavailability of the AlignAI Labs, Inc. office, or a natural disaster (i.e., severe weather, regional power outage, earthquake) affecting the larger primary operating region.
Appendix A Business Continuity Procedures by Scenario
Business Continuity Scenarios
HQ Offline (power and/or network)
CRM, Telephony, Video Conferencing/Screen Share & Corp Email unaffected SUPPORT unaffected HQ Staff offline 3060 minutes)Remote Staff unaffected
Procedure:
-
HQ Staff relocate to home offices 3060 minutes)
-
Verify Telephony, CRM, & Email Connectivity at home offices 10 minutes)
-
Remotely resume normal operations
Colo Offline (power and/or network)
CRM, Telephony, Video Conferencing/Screen Share & Corp Email unaffected SUPPORT Offline Production Database offline (redundant)HQ Staff unaffected Remote Staff unaffected
Procedure:
-
Notify Customer Base that proactive monitoring is offline
-
Normal operations continue
Disaster Event Affecting the Primary Office Region
CRM, Telephony, Video Conferencing/Screen Share & Corp Email unaffected SUPPORT offline HQ Staff offline (variable impact)Remote Staff unaffected
Procedure:
-
Activate Remote Staff
-
Notify Customer Base of impaired functions & potential delays
-
Commandeer Field Resources for Critical Response SE Teams)
Saa S Tools Down
CRM, Telephony, Video Conferencing/Screen Share, or Corp Email Affected SUPPORT partially affected (no new cases, manual triage required)HQ Staff unaffected Remote Staff unaffected
Procedures:
-
Telephony Down
-
Notify Customer Base to use Support Portal or Email
-
Support Staff use Mobile Phones and/or Land Lines as needed
Email Down Gmail/Corp Email)
-
Support Staff manually manage ‘case’ related communications
-
Support Staff use alternate email accounts as needed Hotmail)
CRM Down
-
Notify Customer Base that CRM is down
-
Activate ‘Spreadsheet’ Case Tracking Google Sheets)
-
Leverage ‘Production’ Database for Entitlements, Case History, Configuration data.
Video Conferencing/Screen Share Down Zoom
- Support Staff utilize alternate service as needed
Appendix B RT Os/RP Os
Rank Asset Affected Assets Business Impact Users Owners
Recovery Time Objective RTO
Recovery Point Objective RPO
Comments/ Gaps
1 Google Data centers Site Core services All Engineering
2 Corporate Office Site
Inability toaccessdata? Anyotherimpacts?
All IT Ops
Corporate Network Network
Inability to use network resources from corporate office
All IT Ops
Google Cloud Network Core services All Engineering
Home Office ISP Networks Network IT Ops, Development N/A
Subcontractor Networks Network Development N/A
Third Party Networks Network Sales N/A
Company Laptops Hardware All IT Ops
Digital Projector Hardware All IT Ops
Office Printers Hardware
Inability to print incorporate office
All IT Ops