For years, companies have prepared for the worst. And that was before Sept. 11, 2001. In the wake of that tragedy, perceptions of how to safeguard corporate data have changed. The lessons learned from the World Trade Center catastrophe have formed the blueprints that life science companies must adopt to ensure survival after a disaster. The key shift in disaster-recovery planning since Sept. 11 is termed business continuance planning, which builds upon the time-honored, back-up-everything-on-tape disaster-recovery method. In the event of a disaster, business continuance planning looks for ways to quickly restore day-to-day operations and prevent the loss of critical company data. Business continuance planning also strives to improve the efficiency of normal day-to-day operations, providing methods to smooth out small glitches that can lead to loss of data, productivity, or business. While backing up data to tapes that are stored securely offsite remains essential, business continuance planning relies on additional methods to facilitate disaster recovery. Full Story