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Another year is coming to an end and everyone's gearing up for the holidays. Office parties are being organized, not-so-subtle decorations are being hung everywhere, and thoughts of photocopying certain parts of the human anatomy are already percolating in some minds. Like every year, we promise ourselves that we're going to be on our best behavior, still trying to live down the fools we made of ourselves the previous holiday.

But with all the festivities there remains some core aspects of business that must go on regardless; because after you wake up with a throbbing hangover, you'll still be left with the same to-do list you had before you stripped down to your skivvies and did a tabletop dance with a mistletoe tied around your head.

As Murphy's Law dictates, everything will be fine when you're around and at full staff, but the moment you turn your back — if even for a moment — something catastrophic will occur. So before you toss all your work aside and jump into the snow, there's one important thing to remember: When the parents are away, the gremlins come out to play.

System Availability During the Holidays

Is it necessary to keep your intranet running over the holidays or can you power it down? The answer depends on how long your operation will be closed, the purpose of your intranet and, to a greater extent, the business processes it supports. If your business needs to continue to operate throughout holidays then so must your intranet. This is especially true if you're running an international operation where the local significance of the holidays may mean little elsewhere.

System availability is crucial in high-priority, mission-critical intranets — as discussed in my two-part series on maintaining intranet integrity — and must continue to run despite any environmental conditions and situations. While your user base will be significantly lower during the holidays, it doesn't mean that you can afford to board up the windows and close-up shop for two weeks.

Even with a reduced user base there are aspects of an intranet, and corporate IT systems in general, that still need to be maintained so long as they continue to run:

• system and data backups
• disaster response and recovery procedures
• network and security infrastructure
• general system housekeeping duties

Although most of these components are probably already in place and have been running trouble-free for some time, things can still go wrong. You must be prepared to deal with any problems that may threaten the integrity and stability of your IT systems — holiday or not.

It's always good to have an emergency point-of-contact (or contacts) in the event that something should happen while the majority of your staff is away. You don't want to be left in a position where a critical network or security problem is detected and then having no one available to act upon the threat.

Forming a Skeleton Crew

It's never a good idea to leave systems — especially complex, high-profile ones — running for a long period of time without someone to look after them. This is not to say that these types of systems are so fragile that they require constant attention; it simply means that all IT systems, regardless of how automated, still require some form of human involvement to ensure smooth operation. Systems don't take care of themselves and are rarely, if ever, self-correcting. If something should happen, there needs to be someone available to act upon the problem or threat.

If your intranet is critical to your operation, you may consider forming a skeleton crew — a minimum number of people required to keep a system up-and-running — or an emergency response team (ERT) during the holiday period to act upon IT crises such as:

• software and/or hardware failures
• backup failures
• data restores
• basic user support for personnel who must work over the holidays
• systems infected by virus(es)
• systems compromised by malicious attackers

Whether it's necessary for you to put together a skeleton crew or ERT will be up to you. Smaller operations who shut their doors during the holidays may decide to do likewise with all their IT systems — if no systems are running, there's nothing to maintain. Larger organizations may need to keep their IT systems operational out of necessity.

But you don't actually need to have your skeleton crew or ERT on-site — that would be overkill. If your company is maintaining a basic level of IT operation during the holidays, your IT department will most likely already have someone to oversee the entire IT infrastructure, including your intranet. It's this person's responsibility to "babysit" all of the running IT systems and to contact the appropriate person should something go wrong. If you're lucky, nothing will happen and your skeleton crew or ERT will never have to be called into action.

Remember, though, that a skeleton crew or ERT should only be used for real emergencies. The purpose of maintaining this type of a core staff is to have a point-of-contact in the event of an emergency or to carry out disaster recovery procedures. All other minor issues can be handled by the on-site IT system "babysitter."

Page 2: Choosing your skeleton crew...