HAGERSTOWN, Md. — A little over one year since it was formed asa multi-owned business continuity CUSO by seven Mid-Atlantic creditunions to offer a turnkey solution for business continuity, OngoingOperations, LLC held its first disaster test last month at itsHagerstown facility for charter member Northwest Federal CreditUnion.

Despite revealing what were described as “minor informationtechnology issues,” Ongoing Operations President/CEO Kirk Drakeconsiders the test successful.

Northwest FCU is one of the seven original investors in theCUSO. The other six include: Department of Labor FCU, HEW FCU, NIHFCU, Synergy One FCU, Transportation FCU, and Agriculture FCU.

Since Ongoing Operations was formed in March 2005, Fort BelvoirFCU and Quorum FCU have also come on as investors.

In addition to its nine investors, Ongoing Operations has 11additional clients who are not investors.

Drake explained the purpose of the disaster test for NWFCU wasto demonstrate that by dedicating key resources and pre-staging keyitems, a credit union could reduce its recovery time through theCUSO.

The credit union tested a combination of facilities, people,technology and processes. Drake said NWFCU developed a testing planin advance and was able to execute on the testing plan,consequently proving their recovery strategies and proceduresworked as planned.

Specifically, NWFCU simulated a disaster by telling its staffits main facility in Herndon, Va. was no longer accessible and theyhad to depend on Ongoing Operations' facility in Hagerstown. About25 of NWFCU's staff, representing six departments, came to theCUSO's building used the computers in various cubicles and got towork on a day's worth of credit union business. Drake said thestaff was doing transactions from Hagerstown by 9 a.m.

NWFCU President/CEO Juri Valdov said the test “provided valuableinformation for improving our business recovery processes. We lookforward to expanding our tests within the next several months whenwe would post live transactions.”

Drake explained the disaster test was fairly advanced in itstesting of key technology systems as well as its involvement of awide range of NWFCU personnel. Although the testing turned upseveral minor informational technology issues–one of the phones wasunplugged, someone didn't know a password, or an access card didn'tallow someone access to an area they needed access to –Drake saidthose problems were all resolved on-site.

One of the biggest challenges Drake has had to deal with informing Ongoing Operations as a CUSO service provider is having tocreate a technology environment that supports multiple creditunions and multiple methodologies. “When solving problems for manycredit unions, they can be four or five approaches that solve thesame problem,” he said. The Ongoing Operations facility providesthree primary services: consulting services to create, maintain andsupport a full business continuity or disaster recovery program;infrastructure to support and fully replicate most credit unions'IT infrastructure and normal facilities; and key partnerships toenable full-blown business continuity so that the credit unionremains operational during the disruption. To determine the bestdisaster recovery solution for a credit union, Ongoing Operationslooks at the CU's environment and infrastructure and performs abusiness impact analysis that looks at the risks associated withevery business process the credit union performs in four to fivecriteria.

“When we look at the aggregate data, we can tell the creditunion what their financial risk will be if they're down for acertain number of days, which business process would cause them themost pain, and then make recommendations,” Drake explained.

He added, “Fortunately we haven't had to implement any realdisaster plans yet since none of our credit union investors orclients have declared a disaster.”

All nine of Ongoing Operations' CU investors and clients arelocated in the Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia area.

“As we grow and expand, I'm sure we'll hit an actual enactment,”said the CUSO president.

Drake said plans are in the works to expand Ongoing Operationsnationally. He said the CUSO can open other facilities where it canfind five or six credit unions in a region that want to go in onit. The CUSO will do all the marketing and sales, and will be tiedto the global network.

“Every credit union has to deal with disaster recovery, and mostcredit unions don't have the expertise to deal with that. It takesunique technical challenges, and credit unions have to be willingto take unique approaches than they have in the past,” saidDrake.

In the coming months, Drake will be focused on putting out apricing guide that charges credit unions for disaster continuity ordisaster recovery services based on the number of members in thecredit union.

“It's a very different issue solving problems for 5,000-membercredit unions than it is for credit unions with 40,000 members.We've come up with a pricing structure that's tiered for creditunions and charges by the member. Our new pricing guide will makeour services affordable for any credit union, regardless of theirsize,” said Drake, noting that of the CUSO's clients, 18-20 havemore than $100 million in assets.

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