OPERATIONAL RESILIENCE
Know how your organization will continue when technology or a critical vendor fails.
Get an independent view of what work must continue, where vendor responsibilities stop, what leadership still needs to own, and what should be verified before a disruption forces the issue—without being sold backup, recovery, managed IT, or cybersecurity services.
Request Consultation AvailabilityWe'll confirm fit and provide secure scheduling and payment options before requesting supporting materials.
Helpful to have ready: a high-level vendor list, your IT-support model, known concerns, and any existing continuity, recovery, or incident documentation. Please do not send passwords, credentials, account numbers, client personal information, recovery keys, backup configuration files, or other sensitive information through the website form.
Led by Sterling Unan, CISSP — 25+ years in financial-services technology and operations · Independent, product-neutral advisory
Technology & Cyber Risk Consultation
$495 fixed fee · 60–90 minutes
A leadership-level diagnostic—not a technical audit or disaster-recovery test.
A confidential consultation for leaders who need a clearer view of business continuity, technology recovery, vendor responsibility, communications, and operational resilience.
YOUR CONSULTATION INCLUDES:
- A focused 60–90 minute leadership-level discussion
- An immediate Technology & Cyber Risk Snapshot
- A concise written Consultation Report within three business days
- Practical direction that can stand on its own
No obligation to change providers, purchase a broader review, or enter an ongoing advisory arrangement.
Beech Tree does not sell backup products, managed IT services, or cybersecurity tools.
COMMON BUSINESS CONCERNS
Could your organization continue serving clients if email, systems, or a key vendor went down?
Many organizations first seek continuity guidance after an email outage, cloud-service failure, ransomware concern, unavailable client portal, phone-system disruption, vendor outage, or an uncomfortable question from leadership, a client, insurer, or board. The consultation helps leadership clarify which services are critical, what recovery and communication questions need attention, and what providers are responsible for.
It is not an emergency recovery service or a technical disaster-recovery test. It is an independent starting point for deciding what should be verified, documented, improved, or escalated.
- Critical-work, client-service, and communication priorities during an outage
- Backup, recovery, and restoration-accountability questions
- Vendor dependencies, single points of failure, and service-availability concerns
- Client, customer, employee, and partner communication when normal systems are unavailable
OPERATIONAL RESILIENCE CHECKLIST
7 Questions Every Organization Should Be Able to Answer About Business Continuity
If any of these questions are unclear, your organization has a gap worth addressing.
Not sure how your organization would answer these questions? That is exactly what a Technology & Cyber Risk Consultation is designed to address.
Request Consultation AvailabilityYour current IT, cloud, backup, communications, and cybersecurity providers remain part of the solution. The consultation gives leadership clearer questions, ownership, and next steps.
WHAT YOU RECEIVE
What you receive
During the consultation
- A focused 60–90 minute leadership-level discussion
- An immediate Technology & Cyber Risk Snapshot
- Key continuity, accountability, vendor, and operational-resilience questions requiring verification
- Practical questions to take back to IT, cloud, backup, communications, cybersecurity, and other critical providers
Within three business days
- A concise written Consultation Report
- A prioritized summary of observations and recommended next steps
- A clearer distinction between what is known, what needs verification, and what leadership should decide
- Practical direction that can stand on its own
- A leadership-ready summary of priorities, ownership questions, vendor follow-ups, and recommended next steps
This is independent technology and risk-management guidance—not a disaster-recovery test, technical audit, backup validation, incident-response engagement, legal or regulatory opinion, formal compliance certification, product proposal, or managed-services sales conversation.
THE WHOLE PICTURE
Your backup and technology vendors are not your business-continuity strategy.
Your MSP, cloud platforms, backup provider, phone system, cybersecurity tools, facilities, and business applications may each manage an important part of the environment. But no individual vendor owns the whole picture. Leadership remains responsible for understanding critical work, communications, recovery priorities, vendor accountability, and operational resilience together.
Managed IT provider
Devices, support, selected security operations, and day-to-day technology support.
Microsoft 365, cloud, and communications platforms
Email, identity, collaboration, files, voice, client/customer communications, applications, and service availability.
Backup, cybersecurity, and business-application vendors
Backup, recovery, endpoint protection, line-of-business systems, client portals, payment, payroll, workflow, and supporting services.
Your organization
Leadership, decision-making, client and customer commitments, communications, recovery priorities, business continuity, and accountability.
This becomes more important as organizations adopt more cloud services, support remote or hybrid work, depend on external vendors, use mobile and personal devices, and connect more business processes through third-party platforms. The goal is not to manage every technical detail internally. It is to know the right questions, assign ownership clearly, and make informed decisions.
Resilience Extends Beyond the Office
Remote work, home-office environments, personal and mobile devices, external vendors, cloud services, communications platforms, facilities dependencies, and AI tools can all affect continuity. Beech Tree's advisory covers the full operating environment—not just backups or the office network.
INDEPENDENCE
Independent advice. Practical direction.
Independent perspective
Beech Tree does not sell backup products, managed IT services, cybersecurity tools, or vendor contracts. Recommendations are not shaped by product quotas, implementation revenue, managed-services revenue, or vendor referral fees.
Built for leadership
The consultation is designed for owners, executives, managing partners, administrators, and other decision-makers who need a clearer view of continuity accountability, recovery priorities, and operational risk.
Actionable without pressure
The consultation stands on its own. There is no requirement to change providers, purchase a broader review, or enter an ongoing advisory arrangement.
EXPERIENCE
Experience that connects resilience to leadership decisions.
Sterling Unan, CISSP, brings more than 40 years of technology and cybersecurity experience, including more than 25 years supporting financial-services technology and operations. Beech Tree helps leadership teams translate technical complexity into practical questions, clearer accountability, and decisions that fit the organization's operating reality.
Led by Sterling Unan, CISSP, with 25+ years in financial-services technology and operations and more than 40 years of technology and cybersecurity experience.
Financial Services Technology & Operations
Experience supporting technology leadership, security, vendor relationships, business continuity, and the operational systems that support investment and client-service functions.
Operational Resilience Context
Practical understanding of critical-work dependencies, client and customer communications, vendor relationships, recovery priorities, time-sensitive processes, and the consequences of technology disruption.
Cybersecurity, Governance & Resilience
CISSP-led cybersecurity experience, including identity security, Microsoft 365 governance, vendor oversight, backup and recovery, incident readiness, and business-continuity planning.
Independent Advisory Discipline
Experience improving vendor accountability, evaluating technology services, reducing unnecessary spend, and giving leadership practical information for better decisions.
Led by Sterling Unan, CISSP, with 25+ years in financial-services technology and operations and more than 40 years of technology and cybersecurity experience.
BROADER REVIEW OPTION
If a deeper review is needed
$495 Consultation
A focused, fixed-fee conversation that gives you immediate clarity on your most important business-continuity, technology-recovery, vendor-accountability, and operational-resilience questions. It includes your immediate Technology & Cyber Risk Snapshot and a written Consultation Report within three business days.
Technology & Cyber Risk Review
A comprehensive, independently scoped review of the organization's technology and cybersecurity environment. Separately scoped and priced based on organizational size, technology complexity, vendor relationships, critical work, and the questions leadership needs answered.
Some organizations may decide they need a broader independent review after the consultation. If so, Beech Tree can discuss a separately scoped engagement focused on technology environment, critical-work dependencies, vendor relationships, cybersecurity governance, data protection, access, continuity, recovery readiness, and operational resilience.
The initial consultation stands on its own. A deeper review is discussed only when leadership wants additional evidence, broader environmental visibility, or more detailed vendor-accountability analysis.
A full review typically includes:
- Complete technology-environment assessment
- Critical-work and vendor-dependency review
- Vendor accountability and contract review
- Microsoft 365 security, identity, and access-control review
- Backup, recovery, restoration-priority, and business-continuity readiness
- Technology governance and strategic alignment
- AI adoption, policy, and data-protection review
Full reviews are separately scoped and priced after the initial consultation, only when additional detail would be useful to the organization.
What a Full Review Includes
- Written findings report with prioritized recommendations
- Vendor-accountability matrix for leadership
- Technology and operational-resilience summary for leadership
- Practical plan with vendor questions and next steps
EXAMPLE FINDING
Example finding
EXAMPLE: A SMALL ORGANIZATION
- The managed IT provider held administrator access to the organization's Microsoft 365 environment, including email, SharePoint, and business-critical applications. Leadership had not confirmed whether it held emergency administrative access.
- The organization had backup services but had not documented which systems and data were most critical, which recovery order applied, who was responsible for verifying restoration capability, or how leadership would know whether recovery objectives could be met.
- The organization did not maintain a current inventory of privileged accounts, a documented process for reviewing vendor access, or a clear offboarding checklist for departing employees, contractors, and former service providers.
- There was no documented plan for how staff would communicate with customers, clients, vendors, or employees and continue priority operations if email, a cloud platform, phone system, client portal, or core business application became unavailable.
Why it mattered:
The organization could not independently verify whether critical operations, sensitive information, customer commitments, and communications would be supported during a significant technology disruption. The concern was not that a vendor was acting improperly—it was that leadership lacked a documented view of priorities, ownership, recovery readiness, and decision-making responsibility.
Practical next steps:
Document critical business processes, recovery priorities, and acceptable outage expectations. Confirm backup and restoration responsibilities with the IT provider. Establish recurring privileged-access and vendor-access reviews. Create a basic communication and work-continuity plan for technology disruptions affecting priority operations.
Illustrative example based on common patterns. The Snapshot distinguishes what is known, what is reported by leadership, what requires vendor confirmation, and what may warrant a separately scoped review. Details are generalized and do not describe a specific client engagement.
READY TO CLARIFY YOUR ORGANIZATION'S CONTINUITY AND RECOVERY ACCOUNTABILITY?
Start with a focused, independent conversation.
Tell us the continuity, recovery, technology, vendor, or operational-resilience question your organization needs to answer—whether it involves an email outage, cloud-service dependency, unavailable vendor, backup concern, client communication, or another risk. We will confirm fit and provide secure scheduling and payment options before requesting any supporting materials.
$495 fixed fee · 60–90 minutes · Payment is collected when scheduling · No recurring contract
What happens next
- Request consultation availability
- Receive a secure scheduling and payment link
- Meet confidentially for 60–90 minutes
- Receive your Technology & Cyber Risk Snapshot immediately after the consultation
- Receive a written Consultation Report within three business days
A useful starting point
You do not need a complete technology inventory or recovery plan before booking. Come prepared to describe your critical work, key vendors, current concerns, known dependencies, and any upcoming insurance renewals, vendor renewals, technology changes, client commitments, or business priorities. The consultation will help identify what should be verified next.
The initial conversation can proceed without documents. If high-level supporting materials would be useful after scheduling, Beech Tree will provide secure instructions. Do not transmit passwords, credentials, account numbers, client personal information, recovery keys, backup configurations, security logs, or other sensitive information through the website form or unsecured email.
You do not need to change IT, cloud, backup, cybersecurity, or communications providers to work with Beech Tree. The consultation helps leadership understand the current environment, ask stronger questions, and make more informed decisions with existing vendors.
Immediate Deliverable: Your Technology & Cyber Risk Snapshot
At the end of your consultation, you receive an immediate Snapshot summarizing priorities, risks, options, and vendor questions. The Snapshot distinguishes what is known, what is reported, what requires vendor confirmation, and what may warrant a separately scoped review. Your written Consultation Report is delivered within three business days after the consultation.
Request Consultation Availability
Tell us a little about your organization and the continuity, recovery, vendor, or technology question you are trying to answer. We will confirm fit, scheduling options, and secure next steps.
INDEPENDENT TECHNOLOGY & CYBER RISK ADVISOR
Sterling Unan, CISSP, brings more than 25 years of direct experience in hedge fund technology and operations, including technology leadership, security, vendor relationships, business continuity, and the operational systems that support investment and client-service functions.
Sterling Unan, CISSP · Founder, Beech Tree Technology Advisors · 25+ years in hedge fund technology & operations