Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Analyst

About the position

The Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Analyst at Northwestern Medicine is responsible for ensuring the integrity and recoverability of company data and systems in the event of a disaster. This mid-level position involves participating in disaster response and crisis management activities, maintaining disaster recovery and business continuity plans, and coordinating training related to these areas. The role requires a solid understanding of technology and project management best practices to support the organization's mission of providing exceptional healthcare services.

Responsibilities

• Work with IS and Business Continuity teams to ensure that the disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity (BC) plans support disaster recovery strategy and procedures.
• Maintain the overall plans for executing all DR procedures and understand their interdependencies.
• Review and support critical DR parameters (RPO, RTO, Recovery Tier definitions) in line with the business needs of the institution.
• Maintain detailed DR communications and command and control plans through a change management process.
• Work with the IS architectural and technical staff to ensure that DR solutions are adequate, in place, maintained, and tested as part of the regular operational life cycle.
• Provide input in the design of systems to comply with DR requirements.
• Actively participate in change management and project prioritization (SDLC) meetings to provide input on whether DR Team's requirements have been met in the change or project.
• Support and understand all testing necessary for a successful DR execution.
• Participate in all DR exercises.
• Coordinate, test, and administer DR and resumption plans.
• Provide ongoing feedback for risk management, mitigation, and prevention.
• Provide DR cost estimates in the annual budgeting process.
• Regularly report DR activities to Team Lead and senior leadership.
• Help ensure compliance with all applicable federal, state and local laws, regulations, and ordinances.
• Maintain confidentiality based on NMHC policies and regulations.
• Support critical business processes and establish resources required for the successful resumption of business operations in the event of a disaster.
• Implement a Business Impact Analysis and act as a contributor to DR plans.
• Participate in conducting business resumption interviews and planning sessions with customers.
• Comply with all recovery plans, including process and procedural standards to address routine, backup, redundancy and recovery architectures.
• Actively participate in an exercise, testing, maintenance and audit program to maintain confidence in a predictable and repeatable performance of recovery.

Requirements

• 3+ years of experience in IS operations implementing and supporting application or technical solutions in a data center environment.
• Understanding of current recovery solutions, high availability architectures and virtual or converged architectures.
• Knowledge of crisis communication solutions and basic IS network principles.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills to convey plans, exercises, and activities.
• Ability to interact with technical, non-technical, and management staff.
• Familiarity with business continuity program life cycle plans and source deliverables (e.g., risk assessments, BIAs, continuity planning).
• Knowledge of database management, data storage and repository management, and Microsoft Office tools (Word, Access, Exchange, Excel, Project, VISIO).
• Understanding of disaster recovery methodologies and tools, and data network architectures including TCP/IP.

Nice-to-haves

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems, information protection (information security), or a related IS field.
• 3+ years of experience dedicated to disaster recovery operations and management or related IS experience.
• Familiarity with PMI standard methods and tools.
• Certification from DRII or BCI (ABCP, CBCP or CBCI is preferred).

Benefits

• Tuition reimbursement
• 401(k) matching
• Loan forgiveness