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BCP
Summary (Last update July 2005)
Viscogliosi has developed a Business Continuity Plan (‘BCP’)
as part of our ongoing contingency planning effort. In order
to keep our clients informed, we are providing information necessary
to you about our plan and how it addresses the possibility of a
future significant disruption to our business. Depending on
the scope and severity of a possible disruption (which cannot be
predicted in advance) Viscogliosi’s plan remains flexible.
Our plan is subject to periodic and ongoing revision; any modifications
or updates to the BCP summary will be promptly posted on our website
at www.vcoinc.com.
Plan Overview
Business continuity planning (BCP), by its very nature, is designed
to enable our firm to continue to operate and provide services to
our clients under a variety of circumstances in which one or more
events may make our office unavailable due to a local, regional
or national emergency, or due to the failure of one or more systems
that Viscogliosi relies upon to provide the services that we routinely
provide to our clients, our employees and our various business partners
and counterparties. The BCP plan covers all business areas
of the firm and provides contingency plans for technology, staffing,
equipment, and communication to employees, clients and counter-parties.
While we have described certain types of business continuity issues,
we must advise you that such occurrences, by their very nature are
unpredictable, and can occur in a manner that is outside of our
planning guidelines and could render our estimates of timing for
recovery inaccurate. Under all circumstances it is our intention
to remain in business and to provide ongoing service, as if no disruption
had occurred.
Viscogliosi maintains its headquarters and principal operating location
at 505 Park Avenue, 14
th Floor, New York, NY 10022. In order to provide continuity
for this facility, the company maintains a data backup facility
for information technology, redundant file storage and data processing.
Viscogliosi relies on public utilities for power and phone services
and various industry vendors for services that are significant and
important to our business for the communication of information regarding
client holdings, for the pricing and valuing of client holdings,
and for permitting our company’s employees to communicate
on an efficient basis. All of these service providers have
assured our company that they have made plans for providing continued
service in the case of an unexpected event that might disrupt their
services. Our planning described in various scenarios set forth
below depends to some degree on the accuracy of these assurances.
In any of the following scenarios, we recommend that clients attempt
to contact their normal business contact or visit www.vcoinc.com
for further information.
Scenarios
The following scenarios outline, at a high level, our plans for
business continuity:·
Firm-only event: In the event of
a disaster that affects only Viscogliosi, the firm intends to utilize
as necessary, its data backup facility. Our general response
to this event is to rely on our data backup facility to quickly
and efficiently restore services to our firm and to our clients.
We believe that our BCP will enable us to do so. Our plan
provides for back-up of our key systems upon a same or next day
basis after the first occurrence of a business disruption.
Certain non-core functions are assumed to become available as soon
as possible thereafter.·
Office location or NYC event: Business
disruptions occurring to our office building, its general vicinity
or all of NYC may impact the ability of many of our key employees
to reach the company’s office. In cases such as these
we will rely on our data backup facility, our website (www.vcoinc.com),
the Internet, email and our employees’ personal communication
devices to insure effective communication with clients, employees
business partners and other counterparties. We believe that
our plan and the means of communications made available to employees
should permit the company to maintain the recovery times described
above.·
Regional or national event: Events
occurring in regions other than NYC should not impact the company’s
ability to provide service to clients from our office, unless such
events effect local services such as utilities, phone service, cellular
phone service, Internet, etc. The data backup facility maintained
by the company operates on a separate electric utility grid and
has separate communications providers, but the company cannot provide
assurance that an event that is regional in nature could not cascade
to other geographic areas, and significantly impact the company’s
plan for recovery. Under most circumstances the company believes
that it could provide reconstituted key services to clients upon
a same or next day basis. However, it is likely that in a
New York regional event that industry utilities, other securities
firms and required third party services might be unavailable and
that recovery times could be impacted.
Clients should call their normal business contact for information
or visit our website at www.vcoinc.com
for more information.
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