Krok conducted an analysis for Magnit of the impact of possible disruptions in IT systems on business

2021: Analysis of the Impact of Possible IT Disruptions on Business

The Magnit retail network, together with IT company Kroc, analyzed the impact of possible violations in the operation of IT systems on the business. Business Impact Analysis (BIA) enabled the retailer to proactively identify infrastructure bottlenecks and launch an IT upgrade plan to improve disaster resilience. This was announced on July 29, 2021 by Krok.

The project is large-scale in terms of coverage: the study analyzed over 200 business applications of different levels and about 300 information systems. The quality of the analysis was guaranteed by the long-term experience of the CRIC in conducting audits for large customers and using its own survey methodology, as well as involvement in the IT project and Magnit's business areas.

The infrastructure of Magnit has been developing for years. At the time of the audit, many information systems with different levels of redundancy were operating in the retail network. As part of the global task - ensuring disaster tolerance - it was necessary to determine the required level of IT fault tolerance, and for critical systems - to form an optimal security scheme. In particular, it was necessary to determine the categories of applications by the level of influence on the business, to assess the possible amount of lost profit and loss in case of inaccessibility of services, to decide what means to implement disaster tolerance mechanisms.

The teams of CRIC and Magnit organized more than 300 meetings to obtain reliable conclusions and develop a strategy for improving the fault tolerance of systems. Despite the fact that the active phase of the project fell at the peak of the lockdown in Russia, the working group conducted the survey as planned. All information systems were classified according to their business value, a recovery deadline for accidents was identified - from several minutes to several hours. Recovery plans (DRPs) have been developed for the 20 most critical applications.

Third-party evaluation provides an opportunity to take a different look at existing processes and to identify sometimes non-obvious phenomena that can negatively affect the quality of all our work. Based on BIA reports, we have formed a map of activities and projects to bring infrastructure into line with business requirements, "said Konstantin Aleksandrovich Mikhailyukov, project manager at Magnit.

The larger the company and the more complex the interconnections between individual infrastructure components, the more serious surveys and solutions are needed. The effectiveness of the project is influenced not only by the auditor's expertise, but also by the readiness for dialogue of all links in the client team. Thanks to full feedback from Magnit specialists and their immersion in the process, we were able to prepare the basis for further infrastructure changes in the company on the basis of objective criteria, "said Alexander Sysoev, head of the CRIC computing infrastructure.