Another tip in a series provided by the Offices of Information Security, Information Systems & Computing and Audit, Compliance & Privacy

Since 2008, Penn’s Mission Continuity Program (MCP) has been helping to keep Penn safe. The program’s purpose is to ensure that all schools, centers, and departments can continue to deliver the institution’s mission in the event of any kind of outage or disruption.

Each unit is responsible for determining its own plans and priorities, for storing them in a central database, and for keeping them up-to-date. In addition, each school and center is expected to participate in an annual tabletop exercise, in which a scenario for an outage is provided and the individual unit must determine how it will respond.

Each year, over 60 tabletop exercises are conducted across campus. More information about the program is available at: https://www.upenn.edu/missioncontinuity/.

The entire University benefits from having consistent, transparent, and accessible mission continuity plans for all organizations. Should issues arise, these plans provide the information necessary to help schools and centers resume their operations as quickly as possible.

For example, when the University pivoted to remote operations in 2020 due to the pandemic, schools and centers were able to rely on the planning process they had engaged in, as well as what they had learned from the annual tabletop exercises the program sponsors, to help make the necessary shifts to keep Penn running smoothly.

Faculty, staff, and students who are interested in knowing more about this ongoing University-wide efforts are encouraged to reach out to the Mission Continuity Program at askmc@lists.upenn.edu, which can put you in touch with the MCP liaison for your school or center.

For additional tips, see the One Step Ahead link on the Information Security website: https://www.isc.upenn.edu/security/news-alerts#One-Step-Ahead.