Difference Between Business Continuity Management and Business Continuity Planning
We recently received a question from one of our Tandem Business Continuity Planning software users.
"I just attended a webinar in which a regulator spoke. He made reference to 'Business Continuity Management' and said 'BCM' a couple times. Is this an indicator that regulators are making the switch and will the Tandem product name be changed accordingly, if that's the case?"
This is a great question and goes back to the Federal Financial Institution Examination Council's (FFIEC) November 2019 release of the updated Business Continuity Management booklet . While the title of the book included a name change from "Planning" to "Management," the shift may not be as substantial as it seems on the surface.
What does the FFIEC say?
According to the FFIEC's Information Technology Examination Handbook, Business Continuity Management Booklet:
"The change from business continuity planning to business continuity management reflects the changes in customer and industry expectations for the resilience of operations. […] The focus of this revised booklet is on enterprise-wide, process-oriented approaches that consider technology, business operations, testing, and communication strategies critical to the continuity of the entire entity. However, business continuity should not be focused only on the planning process to recover operations after an event, but rather it should include the continued maintenance of systems and controls for the resilience of operations."
To provide further clarification, the booklet features a diagram of a 10-step business continuity management process , with the establishment of the plan being featured in step six.
In other words
"Planning" is still a very important part of the business continuity process, but the agencies indicate the term implies the development of a written restoration guide. The booklet's name change reflects the idea that the development of a BCP is not a standalone event. Rather, true planning for business continuity is one part of a larger process which involves enterprise-wide strategic planning, effective communication, and focus not only on restoration but resilience.
One cannot successfully exist without the other. A business continuity plan without effective management processes would not be a functional plan in the event of a business disruption. On the other hand, business continuity management processes would be of little value during an adverse event without the development of a well-documented plan.
For example
There are several instances where we see business continuity planning and management processes working together.
- Your business continuity plan includes a documented business impact analysis (BIA). The BIA documentation is designed to help you determine maximum tolerable downtimes , recovery objectives , and resilience controls. That said, your business continuity management includes all the activities that happened around the documentation of the BIA. These activities are things like the conversations you have to determine values for your BIA, exercises, and testing you perform to validate your BIA assumptions, reports to management over the BIA, etc.
- Your business continuity plan includes exercises and testing. The documented results of exercises and testing are used to demonstrate thorough analysis, validate the ability to meet identified metrics, and highlight areas where the plan may need improvement. That said, your business continuity management includes all the activities related to your exercises and testing. These activities are things like determining the scope of your exercises, coordinating exercises with applicable stakeholders, and actual performance of the exercises.
- Your business continuity plan includes reporting your BCP documentation to senior management and the board of directors. These individuals are responsible and will be held accountable for the success or failure of the plan. That said, your business continuity management includes all activities related to reporting. These activities are things like the delivery and presentation of the information, credible challenges presented by the board, and approval of content.
How does this apply to Tandem?
Tandem Business Continuity Planning is an application designed to supplement your business continuity management practices by providing a framework to facilitate the documentation of your plan.
Tandem is feature-rich, designed to help you:
- Perform a business impact analysis and help you assess the impact of potential disasters on your business functions.
- Mitigate disruptions to business operations by establishing recovery objectives and identifying dependencies.
- Plan for resilience with exercises and testing, preparedness controls, emergency checklists, and more.
If you are ready to take your BCP to the next level, check out our blog on Three Ways to Ensure Your Business Continuity Plan is Ready.
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What is it service continuity management.
IT service continuity management (ITSCM) is a key component of ITIL service delivery. It focuses on planning for incident prevention, prediction, and management with the goal of maintaining service availability and performance at the highest possible levels before, during, and after a disaster-level incident.
The goal of ITSCM is to reduce the downtime, costs, and business impact of incidents by putting effective, standardized processes in place for when those incidents do inevitably occur.
Because without a plan, there are a lot of factors that can slow—or stop—incident recovery. After all, your on-call expert might be responding when they’re bleary-eyed at 3 a.m. They might be out of touch with the code after working on something else for weeks or months. They might panic at the scale of the disaster-level incident. Or they might be the newest member of the disaster recovery team, without as much experience resolving issues.
Having a well-documented, clear plan for service continuity management will help minimize any delays caused by learning curves, time away from the code, disaster panic, or midnight alerts.
ITSCM and ITIL 4
In ITIL 4, service continuity management is a process meant to support business continuity management (BCM). The goal of the process is to make sure services are back up and running within the agreed-upon business timelines after major service disruptions.
ITSCM vs. incident management
ITIL 4 makes a distinction between incident management —which handles incidents at a variety of impact levels—and ITSCM, which is about planning for large-scale disasters.
So, what exactly constitutes a disaster? The answer may be different for each business, but the Business Continuity Institute defines it as: “A sudden unplanned event that causes great damage or serious loss to an organization. It results in an organization failing to provide critical business functions for some predetermined minimum period of time.”
The scale of what we call a disaster, the predetermined minimum time, and the definition of critical business functions are three things each business will need to define and document for themselves.
ITSCM and business continuity management (BCM)
Business continuity management is a process managed outside IT that identifies risks to the business and works to mitigate those risks. Some risks may be IT-related, including disaster-level incidents, and some risks may be outside IT control, such as natural disasters or facility fires.
Since BCM encompasses ITSCM as well as other risk-mitigation processes, it makes sense for IT teams to work closely with the BCM team to create:
- A business continuity plan (BCP) that includes plans for prevention and recovery from disaster-level IT incidents
- Business impact analyses (BIA) that identify the potential business impact of an IT disaster
ITSCM objectives
From a business perspective, the goal of ITSCM is to reduce the downtime, costs, and business impact of disaster-level incidents. On a more tactical level, objectives include:
- Working closely with BCM to protect overall business continuity
- Creating and managing plans for IT service continuity and recovery in case of disaster
- Working with vendors to minimize the impact of any downtime in their products and services, as it relates to the business
- Analyzing risk and impact and revising plans accordingly over time
The ITSCM process
Here at Atlassian, our own continuity plan , is built on the assumption that the process of disaster planning is ongoing, leadership-driven, and thoroughly tested. We are determined to not #@!% our customers . Our process includes planning, communication, clear responsibilities, testing, and continuous improvement.
The planning process starts with asking high-level questions and then building a plan based on your answers. Starting questions should include:
- What is our incident response?
- What are the values we’ll follow?
- What kinds of disasters do we need to plan for? What are the risks and threats inherent to our business?
- What systems do we need to support? Which are critical?
- How will we respond in case of each disaster?
- Where is the information we’ll need to support and restore critical systems?
- How can we centralize that information and simplify restoration processes?
- Is the information and process documentation collaborative and reviewable by the teams who will be managing it?
Once you have answers to these questions, the next step is to use those answers to define:
- Policies for disaster recovery
- Scope of IT responsibilities
- Scope of business impact of each risk
- Plans and processes for each risk scenario
- Personnel and documentation requirements
The key to a successful ITSCM planning phase is documenting and templatizing the resulting plan to make it clear and repeatable. Having assets such as an incident response playbook or other runbooks can be a source of truth and organization to responders during a high-stakes scenario.
In the spirit of ITSCM, a solution with access to a built-in knowledge base —like Jira Service Management powered by Confluence—allows for continuous documentation that allows for revision, optimization and collaboration. That way, responders have access to previous resolution documentation and up-to-date resources.
Clear responsibilities
Who’s responsible in case of disaster? Who’s responsible for maintaining and updating plans, processes, and documentation? ITSCM should always have a clear sense of roles and responsibilities not only for disasters themselves, but for ongoing monitoring and improvement. Using Jira Service Management, responders can tag the appropriate party or person on issues to ensure responsibilities are properly delegated and to facilitate cross-functional collaboration.
At Atlassian, part of our approach is to have regular disaster recovery meetings with our site reliability engineers and our risk and compliance team. They discuss gaps in disaster recovery and identify where additional plans, improvements, assessments, or changes need to be made.
Communication
Openness is a core value at Atlassian and we believe the more informed your organization is about your ITSCM plans, the more effective those plans will be.
Offering flexible communication channels throughout the incident response process allows teams to stay in touch by their preferred method. Jira Service Management integrates multiple communications channels to minimize downtime, such as embeddable status widget, dedicated statuspage, email, chat tools, social media, and SMS.
Not only does communication keep stakeholders on board and help the c-suite stave off panic during a disaster-level incident, but it also allows the team to reach out for help from other teams if needed and mitigate the risk of friction caused by organizational confusion.
How do you know if your plans work unless you test them? This is a foundational question for ITSCM and the reason that testing and incident management drills are vital to the success of the practice.
Testing can help you identify weak points in your process, unforeseen issues, and where teams may need re-training or better documentation.
Assess and improve
ITSCM is not a one-and-done process. It requires thoughtful planning up front and ongoing training, assessment, and improvement. That’s why we have regular disaster recovery meetings. It’s why we test system backups and run drills on what happens in case of a data center outage or AWS region failure. And it’s why any ITSCM plan worth its salt is a continually monitored, ever-changing thing.
Most companies represent the ITSCM process as a series of steps, but we think it’s more like a circle. Planning should lead to defined roles and responsibilities. From there, the team should communicate across the organization, test and test again, assess, monitor, and improve and, in those improvements, continue to update the plan, further define roles, and continue communicating.
Again, this is where a built-in, collaborative knowledge base comes into play. Knowledge base articles are a valuable resource when it comes to assessment and documentation. Incident postmortem reports are crucial for revision and repair following an incident, but can also act as a longstanding resource for potential problems in the future. Jira Service Management, powered by Confluence, offers a powerful collaborative platform to execute assessment and improvement solutions.
ITSCM roles and responsibilities
In order to effectively plan and implement ITSCM practices across the organization, many businesses appoint a Service Continuity Manager and a Service Continuity Recovery Team.
Service Continuity Manager (SCM)
As the name suggests, the Service Continuity Manager is responsible for overseeing service continuity. This person typically owns the process from A to Z, leading plan development, managing ongoing monitoring and assessment activities, and overseeing plans in action in case of disaster.
This person is typically an experienced, senior-level technical support professional, but may be in a management role and not directly involved with the tech day to day.
Service Continuity Recovery Team
Led by the SCM, this team is responsible for running tests and incident drills and continually improving ITSCM. The team typically includes technical staff, QA professionals or users for testing, and representatives from departments across the organization who are responsible for keeping lines of communication open between ITSCM and their teams.
Why does ITSCM matter?
Organizations with clear plans for disaster recovery will recover quicker and more fully in case of disasters.
ITSCM isn’t about planning for everyday outages. It’s about addressing worst-case scenarios and ensuring that if they happen, they cause minimal disruption to the lives of customers and employees.
Here are three clear benefits of a good ITSCM practice:
- If disaster strikes, a good ITSCM plan means essential services will be back up and running quickly.
- The organization is always prepared for a major disaster and can react quickly and appropriately.
- Everyone across the business understands what will happen in case of disaster and how long they can expect systems to be down.
Discover how ITSCM improves customer service quality and minimizes organizational downtime with Jira Service Management.
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What’s The Difference Between Business Continuity Management (BCM) And Pandemic Planning?
It’s a safe bet that your financial institution had a business continuity and disaster recovery plan in place before COVID-19—one that you put into effect as sheltering in place and work from home became the new normal.
But did you have a pandemic plan? Do you know the difference?
BCM vs. Pandemic Planning
Business continuity management (BCM) and pandemic planning are both important elements of business resiliency. They are outlined in guidance:
- FFIEC Business Continuity Management Handbook (Updated in December 2019)
- FFIEC Guidance on Pandemic Planning (Updated in March 2020)
In short, BCM is the process of ensuring that a FI is prepared for potential business disruptions. It includes resiliency, continuity, and response capabilities for critical functions and activities. The BCM plan can be triggered by any type of event from a cyberattack to a tornado.
Pandemic planning is a type of BCM that focuses on a specific type of event: a pandemic. Unlike traditional BCM, which typically covers short-term events contained to a specific geographic area, pandemics are typically long-lasting events characterized by staffing shortages and a widespread, international impact.
Because the impact of a pandemic is so far-reaching, regulators have provided specific pandemic planning guidance separate from BCM. The good news is that much of the work done for BCM can be applied to pandemic planning.
Related: What is Business Continuity Management?
There is a huge amount of overlap between BCM and pandemic planning guidance. Both borrow heavily from risk management best practices and the risk management lifecycle. It’s about finding ways to improve resilience rather than simply responding to problems as they emerge.
We’ll breakdown both guidance to show you 10 key areas of overlap so you can find the most efficient way to develop and test your pandemic plan.
Learn more about
Business continuity resources.
Topics: Banks , Ncontinuity , Product Insight , Risk & Compliance , Credit Unions , Business Continuity , Business Resiliency ,
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The leader in business continuity education and certification across many industries, DRI International offers team training designed to fit the needs of every organization, from private corporations to the public sector and everywhere in-between.
DRI International offers colleges and universities the opportunity to familiarize their students with information on business continuity professions and certifications recognized by private and public sector organizations around the world.
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* DRI's three levels of certification are associate certified, certified and master certified. Certifications beginning with "A" are associate, "C" certified and "M" master.-->
Certification is a two-part process; verification of knowledge and confirmation of experience.
A DRI International certification is the most widely recognized and respected business continuity certification in the world. DRI only certifies professionals that have demonstrated both knowledge and experience in the business continuity and/or disaster recovery profession.
Learn more about how to unlock your DRI digital badge and display your DRI certification to enhance your online professional profile today.
Maintaining your DRI International certification carries two requirements; an annual maintenance fee as well as Continuing Education Activity Points (CEAP).
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Be a part of the premier business continuity conference. Join us at DRI2024 in New Orleans, Mar. 3-6, 2024. Check back for more information.
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What is Business Continuity Management?
Business Continuity Management is defined as a: Holistic management process that identifies potential threats to an organization and the impacts to business operations those threats, if realized, might cause, and which provides a framework for building organizational resilience with the capability of an effective response that safeguards the interests of its key stakeholders, reputation, brand and value-creating activities. ( International Glossary for Resiliency )
Business Continuity Management (BCM) integrates the disciplines of Emergency Response, Crisis Management, Disaster Recovery (technology continuity) and Business Continuity (organizational/operational relocation).
Throughout the profession, definitions of Business Continuity Management abound. However, research conducted by the DRI International Glossary Committee identifies the most accurate description of Business Continuity Management as the definition from the ISO 22301 standard cited above. As part of an ongoing process to create and maintain an international glossary, the committee determined the best-in-class definitions for commonly used BCP/DR terms. Creation of the glossary document involved an independent body of highly respected volunteers examining existing recognized definitions and reaching a consensus on which source(s) reflected the most accurate meaning.
The Value of Business Continuity Management
The reasons to have a robust Business Continuity Management program are many and the scope of such a program is enterprise-wide. Here is a list of some of the top reasons that make Business Continuity Management a priority:
Legal and Regulatory Compliance
Regulation: There are over 120 regulations that mandate Business Continuity Management across a variety of industries, including but not limited to:
- Financial Services - Federal Financial Institution's Examination Council ( FFIEC ), Financial Industry Regulatory Authority ( FINRA ), Financial Services Authority ( FSA ), among others
- Energy - North American Electric Reliability Corporation ( NERC ) and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ( FERC )
- Healthcare - Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 ( HIPAA ) and Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations ( JCAHO )
- International - The International Regulatory Framework for Banks ( BASEL III ) and all Central Banks have Business Continuity Management requirements
Negligence: Court decisions, the basis for common law, have ruled that "failure to prepare" as well as "failure to plan" are grounds for negligence. Negligence is defined as a part of tort or personal injury as "a failure to use that degree of care that any prudent person would use under the same or similar circumstances."
Demands by Organizations for their Vendors
Customer demand: Requests for Proposal (RFPs) now require potential vendors to demonstrate that they have Business Continuity Management programs in place.
Regulation: There are regulatory requirements that govern preparedness in the supply chain. Specifically, federally chartered banks are governed by the FFIEC and the OCC (Office of the Controller of the Currency), which charters, regulates, and supervises all national banks and federal savings associations as well as federal branches and agencies of foreign banks. For healthcare organizations, the primary regulatory consideration in the supply chain is covered under HIPAA. All of these regulations call for ongoing monitoring of the third party's activities and performance.
Smart business: It is a competitive advantage for companies to have a resilient supply chain that will make them better able to respond to a disruption than their competition. This ability will make the prepared company a more attractive supplier to larger organizations that will benefit from the increased reliability of the smaller business.
To Maximize Insurance Coverage
Business Continuity Management increases an organization's ability to provide risk transfer information, including in the:
- Analysis Phase of Business Continuity Management: Organizations conducting a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) will be able to ascertain the profit losses as well as the amount of fixed costs that must be paid in the event of an incident that triggers an insured peril. This calculation will help quantify the proper amount of Business Interruption Insurance (BI). The BIA similarly helps to calculate Contingent Business Interruption Insurance (CBI) and Supply Chain Insurance reimburses lost profits resulting from an interruption of business at the premises of a customer or supplier.
- Strategy Phase of Business Continuity Management: Extra Expense Insurance provides for maintaining the operations of an insured item after an accident until normal operations can be restored.
Reputation and Resilience Management
Business Continuity Management can help organizations protect their reputation and increase their resilience in the face of adverse circumstances, whether internal or external. Business Continuity Management can help to protect the brand from a variety of risks, including cyber risks, deliver to customers as promised, and reduce downtime and the cost of recovery in the event of an incident.
Business Continuity
11 crucial parts of bcm business continuity management, may 10, 2022.
by Tracy Rock | May 10, 2022
Just how important is BCM Business Continuity Management, and what goes into it?
Let’s imagine two hot new tech companies operate in the same city: TweedleDee and TweedleDum. On paper, the companies look nearly identical: similar products, similar number of employees, similar offices. But after a storm floods the city, TweedleDum is shuttered, while TweedleDee somehow continues to operate without even flinching. Why?
As it turns out, there was one big difference between the two companies: one had a solid business continuity plan , and the other did not.
TweedleDee had mirrored all of its essential operations and replicated data off-site, so it was able to seamlessly move the business to a backup location. Meanwhile, the employees at TweedleDum were left twiddling their fingers. The company never recovered.
This scenario may be fictional, but many businesses experience the devastating reality of such a disaster every year. According to FEMA, 25 percent of businesses never reopen their doors after a disaster.
If your business doesn’t take BCM Business Continuity Management seriously, then it’s only a matter of time before a disaster wreaks havoc on your operations.
Why take the risk? Here are the 11 essential components to successful continuity planning .
1) The Business Continuity Plan (BCP)
The Business Continuity Plan is a written document that outlines every aspect of the company’s disaster preparedness, response and recovery. It is the fundamental piece of BCM Business Continuity Management. It dictates all the steps that should be taken during a critical event and also outlines the preventative measures for mitigating the risks of disaster.
A good BCP should be able to answer the following questions:
- What is the objective of the plan? Why does the company need it?
- What constitutes a disaster that would activate the plan?
- Who does what during a disaster?
- How will personnel communicate? Who contacts whom?
- What is the likelihood of various types of disasters (natural disasters, cyberattacks, human error and so on)?
- What is the business impact of those events?
- What technologies are being leveraged to ensure continuity?
- What gaps need to be filled? Where are weaknesses, and how can they be corrected?
When a BCP is doing its job, there is no confusion during a disaster. Executives, stakeholders and personnel know what to do and how to do it. And if they don’t, they can easily access the plan and follow the steps as written.
A business continuity document is not static. As we’ll cover below, the plan needs to be frequently reviewed and updated to ensure all the information is accurate and up to date.
2) Recovery Teams
Your continuity planning is nothing without a team to manage it. Generally referred to as a recovery team, these are the personnel who will play the most important roles in both planning and carrying out your emergency procedures.
The responsibilities of your recovery team will include:
- Writing and updating the BCP
- Identifying new risks and/or preventative solutions
- Training personnel on disaster response actions
- Coordinating interdepartmental communication
- Activating the BCP when a situation warrants it
The size of a recovery team generally depends on the size of the business or the scope of the BCP. Ideally the team will consist not only of IT personnel, but also employees from various business-critical departments. These contacts do not necessarily have to be department managers. However, they should be well-versed in the managerial roles of their respective departments and should be able to make important decisions without the help of supervisors.
3) Risk Assessment
One of the most important tasks in managing your BCP is assessing the company’s unique risks. This risk assessment is critical in determining the company’s vulnerabilities and how they relate to a potential disruption in operations.
Each business has its own risks. You may find that your company is more at risk of certain types of disasters than others. This could be due to a number of reasons:
- Location: Proximity to flood-prone areas, earthquake fault lines, known terrorist targets, etc.
- Nature of business: Some businesses may be more likely to be targets of cyberattacks, due to the sensitivity/value of their data.
- Structural or site-specific vulnerabilities: Known issues with older buildings, electrical fire risks, power outages, industrial incidents, etc.
- Chance of human-caused events: This could be anything from internal errors to external vandalism or areas known for rioting.
For one business, it may be more devastating to lose access to a data center, while for another, it may be more disruptive if employees got stuck in traffic due to a bridge closure.
By performing a thorough risk assessment, you’ll be able to identity the most likely disasters and the damage they could cause.
4) Impact Analysis
A business impact analysis is the secondary component of the risk assessment. Once you have identified the unique risks to your organization, the next step is determining how each of those events will affect the business. This analysis is critical for understanding the true impact of each situation so that planning and resources can be prioritized appropriately.
For most businesses, determining the impact of a disaster is chiefly a financial calculation. However, there are several things to consider as part of this calculation:
- What is the direct operational impact of the event? What are the consequences?
- Which operations will be affected and how?
- How long will the outage last?
- How many employees will be idled by the event? For how long?
- Will revenue be affected?
- What are the estimated costs for recovery?
Each of these answers helps to calculate the true cost of the disaster, which you may prefer to document in terms of hourly and daily losses. Each type of disaster will have a different financial impact. This will allow you to prioritize around the most disruptive events to ensure that enough systems are in place to prevent, mitigate and respond to those disruptions.
In your business continuity plan, you will typically want to categorize the impact of each risk on a scale of 1 to 5. This makes it easier to gauge the severity from a high-level standpoint, particularly when comparing it against the likelihood of each event.
5) Disaster Response Procedures
Once a risk assessment has been completed, it is easier to define the specific steps that need to be taken in the event of a disaster. These steps will generally be different for each type of event, though some processes will overlap.
Outlining these procedures is essential for personnel to know what to do when disaster strikes. Procedures should include even the most seemingly obvious steps, like calling 9-1-1 in a fire, as well as the more complex processes that ensure business continuity, like recovering data backups or moving business-critical employees to a back-up site.
The steps should not be too general. A list of DR procedures might include actions like:
- Notify Recovery Team leads of scope of event, as well as senior management
- Diagnose affected devices and servers, if accessible
- Contact appropriate vendors (i.e. due to an application outage or any event affecting third-party systems or recovery tools. List the primary points of contact, with emergency communication methods)
- Retrieve emergency funds (where, how and who)
- Establish transportation for personnel to/from backup site
- Notify insurance provider(s)
These steps are not specific to one disaster. But they are examples of the 360-degree approach that is needed to eliminate confusion and get operations back up and running.
6) Technology
Another fundamental part of managing continuity planning is identifying and implementing the technologies that make continuity possible. That includes all the tech, hardware, software and configurations for both preventing a disaster and recovering from one.
Your BCM technology includes things like:
- Data backup and recovery solutions
- Cloud storage
- Anti-malware & anti-virus solutions
- Firewall settings
- Network user permissions
- Internal or external data centers
Basically any part of your IT infrastructure is applicable here if it will be needed to restore operations after a disaster.
The BCP writers and recovery teams are tasked with identifying the best technology solutions for business continuity and making sure that existing systems are properly maintained, tested and up to date.
7) Backup Locations and Physical Assets
If the company’s office, warehouse or manufacturing plant is suddenly destroyed, where does the business go?
In an ideal world, you’ll already have a backup location ready to go, along with backup equipment, so that business-critical personnel can get back to work immediately.
Managing your continuity planning thus involves finding, securing and identifying these secondary spaces and assets:
- Locations of backup facilities
- Contact persons in charge of managing those locations
- Inventory of emergency backup equipment
- Inventory of all physical assets located at the disaster site (for both insurance and replacement purposes)
Having backup locations may be feasible for enterprise companies, but not all small businesses can afford to lease a second office that just sits empty, waiting for disaster to strike. Still, companies can prepare for such a scenario by researching possible locations and partnering with real estate professionals who could help to secure a spot at a moment’s notice.
Like all of BCM, this is an evolving, constantly moving process. When one possible back-up location becomes unavailable, another must be selected. And since the backup location will not have any infrastructure ready to go, recovery planners will need to outline the fastest, most efficient steps for moving operations to the new site when needed.
8) Lines of Communication
Without the ability to communicate in an emergency, recovery teams will not be able to do their jobs. Restoring operations will take far longer and confusion will mount.
This is why it is critical to determine how personnel will reach each other in a disaster, especially if the normal lines of communication have been broken.
Consider things like:
- Emergency communication methods
- Calling trees to identify who contacts whom
- Contact information for all personnel
- Emergency backup mobile phones for select personnel
- External websites or call-in number for company announcements
9) Testing & Mock Recovery
Companies should put their BCPs to the test on a regular basis. This can involve everything from a fire drill to a mock recovery of lost data.
The purpose of testing is to ensure that the procedures outlined in the plan are effective. If it becomes clear that nobody knows what to do during a mock event, or systems aren’t working like they’re designed, then recovery teams need to go back to the drawing board.
Schedule tests on a periodic basis and use the results to identify both strengths and weaknesses in your continuity planning.
10) Periodic Review and Recommendations
Similar to testing, another important component of business continuity management is continually reevaluating the existing planning and systems.
When developing a BCP, businesses will naturally identify gaps in their planning. These weaknesses should be documented along with action steps for resolving them. Those action steps could involve anything from creating new recovery protocols to implementing strong data backup systems. But the fundamental task is making sure your planning is reviewed on a regular basis.
When reevaluating a BCP, here are some questions to keep in mind:
- Are recovery protocols still relevant and up to date?
- Could recovery procedures be even faster and more efficient?
- Do additional systems or technologies need to be implemented?
- Which areas of risk require additional planning?
- Are there any new risks to operations that were not applicable or identified when the BCP was created?
- Has the potential impact of those events changed? Are they more or less severe?
If changes are recommended, they should be clearly communicated with the reasons that warrant them. This is especially important if stakeholders will need to review an assessment before making additional technology investments.
For example, maybe your BCP review uncovers that your existing BCDR system is not adequate for newer threats like ransomware. Your assessment should make clear that the current implementation is creating a major risk for significant data loss and slow recovery, whereas a newer system could vastly improve backup frequency, recovery speed and overall continuity.
11) Plan Updating
It should be clear by now that all of the components listed above are constantly changing. Technologies become outdated. Personnel leave the company. New risks emerge. Your BCP might be up to date today, but chances are it will be outdated in a week from now.
As such, every company’s continuity planning must be constantly evaluated and updated:
- Determine how often the BCP should be reviewed and by whom
- Schedule periodic meetings for recovery team
- Perform risk assessment at least yearly
- Always include the most recent “date updated” in plan documents
Frequently Asked Questions
1) what is business continuity management.
Business continuity management is the process of managing strategies that enable a business to keep running during an operational disruption. Management can include documentation, such as the creation of a business continuity plan, and the formation of disaster recovery protocols. It can also include the management of business continuity technologies, such as data backup systems. Business continuity managers are tasked with assessing a business’s unique risks, analyzing the impact of different operational disruptions and applying an effective strategy for disaster prevention and recovery.
2) What are the 4 main areas of business continuity management?
The four main areas of business continuity management are 1) disaster prevention, 2) disaster preparedness, 3) disaster response and 4) disaster recovery. These 4 categories are sometimes also referred to as “disaster management.” Each category is comprised of protocols and systems designed to help an organization maintain continuity by preventing and mitigating disasters, preparing for the most likely disruptions, appropriately responding to a disaster situation and executing a full recovery. All of these protocols should be documented in a business continuity plan.
3) What’s the difference between BCM and BCP?
A business continuity plan (BCP) is a central component of business continuity management (BCM). BCM refers to the overall management of continuity strategies and implementations, whereas BCP refers specifically to the documentation.
4) Which technologies are business continuity management?
Essentially any form of technology that helps a business maintain operations can be considered part of business continuity management. Traditionally, a business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) solution is viewed as the most important technology, as it enables businesses to recover lost data, applications and operating systems. However, a wide range of other tech plays a role in BCM, such as antivirus software, network firewalls and backup power generators, just to name a few.
Every business needs to consider how it will prepare for an operational disruption. A lack of planning is a recipe for disaster. Because if a business cannot recover quickly enough, it might never recover at all. The ongoing process of business continuity management helps to ensure that an organization is prepared for an adverse event and has systems in place to keep the business running.
Get More Information
For more information on business continuity solutions for small businesses, contact our experts at Invenio IT. Request a free demo of robust BCDR solutions from Datto, or contact us directly by calling (646) 395-1170 or emailing [email protected]
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A Complete Guide to Business Continuity Management
Organisations may be exposed to the risk of unexpected disruption to their business operations such as natural disaster, fire, flood, supply chain disruption, cyber attack, employee strike and pandemic. Such events can severely impact revenue, profitability and even survival.
To protect your organisation and ensure that business operations continue to function when such events occur, you must establish a business continuity management system (BCM).
By the end of this article, you will be equipped with knowledge on:
• What is business continuity management?
• What are the 3 main areas of business continuity management?
• What is the difference between a business continuity plan (BCP) and BCM?
• What are the key elements of business continuity management?
• What are the steps in business continuity management?
What is business continuity management?
Business Continuity Management (BCM) is the management process that oversees and implement strategies to address the risk of unexpected disruptions. It covers emergency response, risk management, planning, business continuity plan (BCP), training, testing and improvements.
What are the 3 main areas of business continuity management?
There are three main areas in the processes of business continuity management:
1. Establishment
2. Implementation
3. Continuous improvement
These processes and their interactions are needed for an effective and comprehensive business continuity management that will help your organisation identify potential threats and recover from any form of disruptions or threats to your business functions. These three areas will be covered in greater detail under the steps in BCM.
What is the difference between BCP and BCM?
BCP is a plan that your organisation can develop to perform the necessary actions to recover from unexpected disruptions and resume normal operations again.
BCM is the management process to oversee and implement strategies to address the risk of unexpected disruptions or crises and minimise the impact on business operations. Disruptions can include floods, fires, workers strikes, supply chain cut-off, pandemic, computer system hacked, etc.
What are the key elements of business continuity management?
BCM is a holistic management process that integrates various elements, namely Business Continuity Plan (BCP), Emergency Response, Crisis Management, Disaster Recovery, Risk Management, Business Impact Analysis, Resilience and Reputation Management.
1. BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLAN (BCP)
BCP is an integral part of BCM that focuses on resuming operations during an unplanned disruption until it returns to normal again. The plan outlines the strategies and actions required by the organisation, which is more comprehensive than a disaster recovery plan. It contains contingency plans for every aspect of your business operations that may be affected, such as financial services, human resources, productions, inventory management, distributions, external suppliers and business partners etc. The BCP must detail the roles and responsibilities of various key stakeholders and be shared with top management for their agreement and sign-off.
2. EMERGENCY RESPONSE
This is often seen as one of the critical elements in BCM that require the most resources and management’s attention. It requires very urgent intervention to mobilise people and various resources to bring an incident under control quickly. An emergency can include natural disasters, pandemics or major accidents etc. The response usually focuses heavily on the protection and safety of lives, the company’s assets, health and the environment.
3. CRISIS MANAGEMENT
This is a process to manage a response to a crisis or major event affecting your business operations in order to stabilise and effectively control the situation and recover your operations in the quickest time possible. Crisis can be attributed to impending changes related to the country’s social, political, economic, environmental or security situation. It often causes uncertainty and threats to the organisation’s goals.
4. DISASTER RECOVERY
A key component of BCM is disaster recovery. It includes the activation of the recovery team to carry out the necessary actions in handling a specific disruption when an incident happens. For example, when there is an IT disruption to the organisation’s network servers or cyber attacks, the disaster recovery plan will include workarounds or the use of backup systems to recover critical IT assets or systems so that your business operations can continue until they are restored. An essential aspect of disaster recovery is reviewing and assessing the recovery time objective after the incident to address any shortcomings and revise the plan for future implementation.
5. BUSINESS IMPACT ANALYSIS
This analysis is conducted to help your company identifies potential threats and possible risks that your organisation is exposed to and analyse the impact of the disruption if it happens. It is an essential element of BCM as it supports the business continuity process. It involves reviewing all critical activities within your business functions and the recovery point objective and time frame required to minimise the impact of a disruption.
6. RISK MANAGEMENT
Another key component of BCM is the creation of Risk Management to identify the broad array of potential risks to your organisation, covering resources (human, property, equipment and facilities), financial assets, operations, regulatory compliance, information security etc. The probability or likelihood of each risk occurring and their potential impact and severity have to be evaluated, assessed, ranked and measured against your organisation’s risk tolerance to prioritise which risks to address or mitigate first relative to the others.
7. RESILIENCE AND REPUTATION MANAGEMENT
BCM is a very fundamental and significant aspect of business operations in any organisation. BCM is itself a risk to the organisation if it is not managed effectively or adequately. Your organisation needs to be prepared for any unexpected disruptions or incidents so that it can protect or resume its operations and continue to function and recover from the adversity. Having an effective BCM process in place can help companies meet regulatory compliance and manage and protect their reputation and build organisational resilience, thereby protecting the brand and enhancing their competitive advantage.
What are the steps in business continuity management?
Establishment
Establish a BCM system by first creating a team to manage the various processes. Your top management must show commitment and support to the team by providing the necessary resources and training competent people with defined responsibilities.
Carry out a risk assessment of your organisation. You will need to identify and evaluate the risks or possible disruptions your organisation is exposed to and determine the severity and likelihood of different threat scenarios.
Perform a business impact analysis (BIA). This is to assess the potential impact to the different functions within your business operations in the event of a disruption and the maximum time required to resume operations or recover from it.
Implementation
After the management team has been formed, with risk assessment and business impact analysis performed, the next phase is the implementation, which will utilise the results and findings from your risk assessment and business impact analysis.
Develop strategies and create a BCP and implement these recovery strategies across your organisation. These strategies and plans must be detailed, comprehensive, realistic and effective so that every stakeholder involved can understand and be guided on their roles and responsibilities. Do include the actions to be taken in the event a disruption strikes.
Continuous improvement
The final phase is continuous improvement.
Carry out regular testing of your BCP to ensure that the entire organisation is thoroughly trained and prepared for any disruption to your operations. This is typically performed through annual simulation exercises to ensure all stakeholders are fully aware of their respective actions in response to various scenarios or disruptions that can affect the business operations.
Step 6:
Periodically review your business continuity plan to make improvements to the existing BCP. Through the tabletop exercises in step five, your organisation can identify new threats, fine-tune and adjust in accordance with any changes in the business process so that your existing plans will continuously improve, adapt and update to accurately and effectively respond to new different scenarios.
Business Continuity Management plays a very critical role in every organisation. For your company to continue its business operations when disruptions occur, you will need to establish, implement and continuously improve your business continuity management processes.
ISO 22301 is the international standard that helps organisations craft business continuity plans to protect them and help them recover from disruption when an incident occurs. It also helps companies identify potential threats to their businesses and build the capacity to deal with unforeseen events with an adequate response.
Stendard can help your organisation by providing business continuity management consulting services with experienced consultants. If you have any questions regarding business continuity, please feel free to drop us an inquiry.
At Stendard, we believe that quality is everyone’s business because it takes a team to consistently deliver and uphold excellent standards that build confidence with customers, partners and the community. We are a competent group of experts who can provide consultancy support and advice on using technological platforms for your company through this journey.
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Business Continuity Plan
Power through business disruptions and ascertain operational stability with a practical and effective business continuity plan
Updated 15 Feb 2023 , Published 30 Apr 2021
What is a Business Continuity Plan?
A business continuity plan is a practical guide developed by companies to enable continuous operations in the event of major business disruptions like natural disasters and global lockdowns. Business continuity planning usually involves analyzing the impact of disrupted business processes and determining recovery strategies with management. Business continuity plans should also be properly documented and tested through exercises for optimal effectiveness.
Business Continuity Plan | View Sample PDF
The goal of a business continuity plan is to strengthen the defense of businesses against a number of potential disruptions. It also aims to maintain critical business functions during unforeseen disasters. With a comprehensive business continuity plan, leaders can ensure that despite restrictions, there would be a reduced impact on the company, its employees, and operations.
- Why Is It Important?
With economies impaired by the COVID-19 pandemic , business continuity has increasingly become a top priority for organizations around the world. A business continuity plan (BCP) is important because it helps companies maintain essential functions amid or after emergency situations, protecting their reputation and minimizing financial losses. Moreover, it helps employers stay on top of disruptive incidents and empower workers to complete job tasks with confidence.
- Business Continuity Plan vs. Disaster Recovery Plan
The main difference between a business continuity plan and a disaster recovery plan is that the former encompasses the latter—that is, business continuity planning includes disaster recovery planning. I SO 22301:2019 is the international standard for business continuity management (BCM) systems, and it outlines how specific plans for disaster recovery, incident preparedness, and emergency response may be needed rather than just one large plan for business continuity.
- How to Write a Business Continuity Plan
Creating a business continuity plan seems to be a daunting task at first, especially for managers of operations, information technology, and human resources as they are often designated with this duty. As recommended by the International Labour Organization (ILO), listed below are general steps in developing a business continuity plan for small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs):
- Step 1: Determine the risk profile through a self-assessment using the 4Ps framework—People, Processes, Profits, and Partnerships
- Step 2: Identify key products, services, or functions
- Step 3: Establish the business continuity plan objectives
- Step 4: Evaluate the potential impact of disruptions to the business and its workers
- Step 5: List actions to protect the business
- Step 6: Organize contact lists
- Step 7: Maintain, review, and continuously update the business continuity plan
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When planning for business continuity, it helps to break down its elements into quickly-understood segments. Keeping the plan user-focused can also help ensure usability and promote transferability. The following is a brief ILO example of how a small business owner developed a business continuity plan to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 :
COVID-19 Risk Assessment: high-risk profile
Key Products: different types of canned sardines
Objectives:
- Maximize the physical and emotional safety of the owner and workers
- Resume operations as quickly as possible following disruptions
- Make sure that key products are resilient to disruptions associated with COVID-19
- Safeguard supply chain
- Ensure that the enterprise fulfils its contractual commitments with clients
Potential Impact of Disruptions:
- Workers falling sick (owner’s/suppliers’/support services’)
- Government restrictions on freedom of movement could affect the owner’s (and the suppliers’) ability to get to work
- Government restrictions on accessing the port could affect the customers’ ability to get the products to market
- Inability of government utilities to provide services (water and electricity were of chief concern)
- Drop in demand for products
4Ps Framework Action Points:
- People (lives of workers and family members) Limit the contact points to a single one in the business and set up a sanitation point to lessen the exposure there. Review the standard ways of working and adapt to physical distancing criteria . This would require new shift arrangements to be discussed with the workers. Moreover, prepare for increased absenteeism.
- Processes (business operations) Ask workers to volunteer for ensuring sanitation points are well-stocked daily, establishing a temperature checking station at entrance for all workers/suppliers/customers/visitors, daily consultation with suppliers and customers to assess their situation and any changes that have occurred, and making sure everybody is familiar with ways to stay safe at home .
- Profits (revenue generation) Work out daily operational costs (payroll, rent, supplies, etc.) and make simulations based on the financial needs if key disruptions occurred. Notice opportunities for increased sales as well. Discuss with main suppliers about the availability of alternative sources and put agreements in place to enable this.
- Partnerships (enabling environment to carry out business activities) Strike an agreement with other SME owners to share safety measures and practices for each of their businesses. Agree to a common set of procedures to keep workers safe and share the cost of getting information on how to handle workplace issues like changes to working time, possible redundancies, and other HR issues.
Contact Lists:
- Contact numbers of authorities and third parties (police, emergency services, firefighters, nearest hospitals, insurance company)
- List of workers, their positions and contact details (mobile phone and email address) as well as worker’s emergency contact details
- List of clients, suppliers, contractors and government agencies the owner worked with, including the contact person and details (mobile phone, email address, and street address)
- Communication methods to connect with workers during the COVID-19 crisis (Facebook, WhatsApp, etc.)
- Staff emergency call tree
- Review the business continuity plan every week to improve its effectiveness
- Update risk assessments, strategies for business continuity, and other procedures
- Ensure continual improvement of all the process included in the business continuity plan
Even when disruptions can force businesses to shut down, yours doesn’t have to. Aim for operational stability by developing and implementing a business continuity plan with the help of a simple tool like SafetyCulture (formerly iAuditor) . SafetyCulture is a digital platform that empowers people to work safely and efficiently through mobile checklists, actions, and reporting.
Using SafetyCulture as a business continuity software , here’s how different companies around the world reached business continuity amid COVID-19 :
Coming Out Strong as the Pandemic Unfolded
Footasylum is a sports fashion retailer in the UK with 70 stores and over 2,700 employees nationwide. Because of the emerging novel coronavirus outbreak, they knew it was inevitable for retail stores to close without an idea when they could safely reopen.
They used SafetyCulture to safely reopen stores by conducting a preliminary COVID-19 store opening check which provided incredibly quick insight on the current state of the stores and created actions for what needed to be done to control health and safety risks.
Now that stores are open, the team uses SafetyCulture to monitor daily activity through a retail COVID-19 daily requirements check , giving the management confidence that they are doing everything that is reasonably practicable to ensure the safety of their staff and customers.
“We have come out of this as a really strong team, and pride is really high,” said Jane Buck, Head of Human Resources and Health and Safety.
Acting at Lightning Speed to Protect Hundreds of Staff and Thousands of Customers
Statewide Independent Wholesalers (SIW) is a grocery wholesaler that holds and delivers goods for most of the major supermarkets in Tasmania, Australia . When COVID-19 hit, they needed to make decisions quickly due to the risk which was significantly high.
The grocer giant stayed completely focused on meeting COVID-19 hygiene and distancing requirements , as they do around 75 checks every week. Health, Safety, and Environmental Manager Courtney Newman shared, “SafetyCulture is a really valuable tool to do that. It’s made a huge difference to our data collection, and our behavior observation space, too.”
They managed to minimize 6.5 hours of admin time which was useful when they needed that time to keep themselves informed on the latest news and guidance. Courtney continued, “I took the SafetyCulture program and used it the way I wanted to. This means if any of our teams are doing anything of risk, we work with them to make sure they adhere to the guidelines.”
Navigating the Pandemic and Beyond with Safety, Consistency, and Quality
Snooze Eatery is a popular chain of restaurants with 43 locations in the US. During one of the most uncertain periods for hospitality businesses, they used SafetyCulture to build up a culture of safety, consistency, and quality.
During reopening, the team created the brand new role, ‘Safety Dancers’, who are in charge of cleaning, sanitizing, and managing the capacity of the eatery. This meant that guests could trust the safety and cleanliness standards of the restaurant, and enjoy a cup of coffee in bliss.
SafetyCulture has allowed them to reassure their employees and guests during a time where trust in public spaces is low because of the potential health and safety risks. They also don’t just implement COVID-19 protocols with SafetyCulture —it’s a safeguard for food and service quality across all their locations.
“It’s a unique tool. The inspections and templates make you go through a checklist, but it also makes you give proof in the form of photos and notes, and to take care of things on the spot. It holds you to the utmost perfect standard in every way.”
—Katie Birner, Snooze Eatery Assistant General Manager
Business Continuity Plan Templates
Get started with your business continuity plan by using pre-made industry templates you can customize and use on SafetyCulture. This free collection of BCP templates includes audit checklists to help you assess the effectiveness of your business continuity plan, keep it updated, and take action on areas for improvement.
- View Business Continuity Plan Templates
SafetyCulture Content Specialist
Jona Tarlengco
Jona Tarlengco is a content writer and researcher for SafetyCulture since 2018. She usually writes about safety and quality topics, contributing to the creation of well-researched articles. Her 5-year experience in one of the world’s leading business news organisations helps enrich the quality of the information in her work.
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Business Continuity vs Business Resiliency: What’s The Difference?
If there is one thing that businesses around the world have learned this year, it is this: nothing is certain. When we wished each other Happy New Year, most of us expected life to go on as usual. But as Dr. Spencer Johnson said in his best-selling book Who Moved My Cheese ,
“Life is no straight and easy corridor along which we travel free and unhampered, but a maze of passages, through which we must seek our way, lost and confused, now and again checked in a blind alley”.
All businesses want to flourish regardless of the season, but this calls for forward planning and risk management to make one prepared for the unforeseen. And this brings us to two terms—business continuity and business resiliency—that are used interchangeably but are different in some ways.
Let’s take a look.
What is Business Continuity?
The ISO 22300:2018 standard defines business continuity as:
“The capability of an organization to continue the delivery of products or services at acceptable predefined levels following a disruption”.
A disruption could be anything from your superstar employee moving to your competitor, new legislation forcing you to make drastic changes to your products, or an unforeseen event in the local or global economy that destroys what you have taken years to build. Business continuity means anticipating such disruptions and preparing a plan to ensure that you can continue business operations if the disruptions materialize.
We can use the Plan Do Check Act (PDCA) cycle to describe the activities involved in business continuity management :
Planning for business continuity mainly involves:
- Understanding the environment in which your organization operates.
- Identifying potential risks which, if they materialize, can disrupt day-to-day operations. As you identify risks, you’ll classify, prioritize, and determine mitigation actions.
In addition, business impact analysis exercises are used to identify critical business processes, the underlying assets that support them, and the potential impact the organization faces should the assets or processes be disrupted. Here, key metrics such as RTO, RPO, and MAO are used to determine the acceptable disruption and required speed of continuity.
This involves implementing the control measures that would ensure continuity in case disruption occurs in line with the business continuity plan . These would include:
- Appropriate IT systems
- Defined target metrics
As people are expected to implement the business continuity plan, you must provide training for key players and create awareness for everyone involved to ensure alignment and preparation for the unexpected.
The organization must continue to regularly check whether the control measures are working and remain relevant to meeting the organization’s needs, especially as the environment changes. Testing will identify whether the continuity metrics can be met using existing measures or more is required.
Based on the results of the tests and actual disruptions, the leadership will need to take both corrective and preventive action to ensure the business continuity plan remains effective for the ever-evolving context that the business faces.
( Learn more about how the PDCA cycle can support continuous improvement .)
What is Business Resiliency?
The ISO 22316:2017 standard defines organizational resilience as:
“The ability of an organization to absorb and adapt in a changing environment to enable it to deliver its objectives and to survive and prosper.”
ITIL 4 defines resilience as the ability of an organization to anticipate, prepare for, respond to, and adapt to both incremental changes and sudden disruptions from an external perspective.
In simple terms, it means taking a blow and recovering from it. For a business, that means that when disruption occurs, you have mechanisms in place to absorb the hit without significant impairment to your business operations.
In order to have a framework for effective organizational resilience, there are certain principles that need to be adhered to. Resilience requires:
- Behaviour that is aligned with a shared vision and purpose
- An up-to-date understanding of an organization’s context
- Ability to absorb, adapt, and effectively respond to change
- Good governance and management
- Diversity of skills, leadership, knowledge, and experience
- Coordination across management disciplines and contributions from technical and scientific areas of expertise
- Effective risk management
With these principles in place, you can deploy a coordinated approach that provides:
- A mandate to ensure the organization’s leadership is committed to enhance organizational resilience
- Adequate resources needed to enhance the organization’s resilience
- Appropriate governance structures to achieve the effective coordination of organizational resilience activities
- Mechanisms to ensure investments in resilience activities are appropriate to the organization’s internal and external context
- Systems that support the effective implementation of organizational resilience activities
- Arrangements to evaluate and enhance resilience in support of organizational requirements
- Effective communications to improve understanding and decision making
Continuity vs Resilience: Next steps
According to PWC , business resilience builds on the principles of business continuity but extends much further to help enhance an organization’s immune system to be able to tackle challenges, fend off illness and bounce back more quickly.
How to increase Business Resiliency
As there is no single approach to enhance an organization’s resilience, it is more realistic to consider it the result of:
- The relationships and interactions of attributes and activities.
- Contributions from other management disciplines such as disaster recovery , crisis management, and business continuity, which by themselves are insufficient to lead to resilience.
Similar to business continuity, there is a lot of emphasis in organizational resilience on understanding the environment, identifying and assessing potential risks that could disrupt the business operations, and planning to deal with the disruption if it occurs. However, while business continuity is process centric, resilience is more strategic in nature, being a holistic approach that is influenced by a unique interaction and combination of strategic and operational factors.
Additional resources
For more on business practices and culture, explore the BMC Business of IT Blog and these articles:
- What Is Threat Remediation? Threat Remediation Explained
- Impact, Urgency, and Priority: Understanding the Matrix
- The State of ITSM in 2020
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About the author.
Joseph Mathenge
Joseph is a global best practice trainer and consultant with over 14 years corporate experience. His passion is partnering with organizations around the world through training, development, adaptation, streamlining and benchmarking their strategic and operational policies and processes in line with best practice frameworks and international standards. His specialties are IT Service Management, Business Process Reengineering, Cyber Resilience and Project Management.
- HR & Payroll
Building a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)
Whether you are a business owner or work for a large enterprise, business continuity planning will help you respond faster when disruption strikes and minimize the negative impact on your business. Most businesses who are surviving the Covid-19 have had a good Business Continuity Plan in place, though many have improvised and learnt along the way.
Not having a BCP puts you at the risk of either being unable to continue selling or in some cases unable to ship products during unplanned disruptions or pandemics. Your businesses ability to recover from these unplanned disruptions will be much slower and less effective if a BCP is not in place, eventually impacting both your revenue and your brand reputation.
What is a Business Continuity Plan?
A business continuity plan (BCP) is a process that documents and outlines how a business will continue operating during an unplanned service disruption. Business continuity planning or BCP is the process involved in creating a system of prevention and recovery from possible threats to your business. It contains contingencies for business processes, human resources, assets and business partners, and every other aspect of the company that might be affected. The BCP ensures that the personnel and the assets are protected and can function quickly in the event of a disaster.
The BCP plans typically contain a checklist that includes equipment and supplies, data backups, and backup site locations. Plans can also identify plan administrators and have contact information for emergency responders, key personnel, and backup site providers. In addition, the BCP may provide detailed strategies on how business operations can be managed for both long-term and short-term outages.
The critical component of a business continuity plan (BCP) is its disaster recovery plan containing the strategies for handling IT disruptions to networks, personal computers, servers, and mobile devices. The BCP should cover how to re-establish office productivity and enterprise software to meet the essential business needs. Manual workarounds should be outlined in the BCP to continue until computer systems can be restored.
There are a few primary aspects to a business continuity plan for the key applications and processes as mentioned below:
- High availability : It provides for the capability and processes to have access to applications regardless of local failures. These failures might be in the physical facilities, business processes, or IT software or hardware.
- Continuous operations : It safeguards the ability to keep things running during a major disruption, as well as during planned outages such as planned maintenance or scheduled backups
- Disaster recovery : Establishes ensures a way to recover the data center at a different site if disaster destroys the primary site or otherwise renders it inoperable.
Why Is Business Continuity Planning (BCP) Important and Needed?
Most businesses are open to a host of disasters that vary in various degrees, from minor issues to catastrophic issues, and BCPs are crucial. BCP is usually meant to help a company to continue operating in the event of disruptions or threats. This could result in a loss of profit, and higher costs, leading to a drop in profitability. Businesses can not rely on insurance alone because it does not cover all the costs and the customers who move to the competition.
Developing a comprehensive BCP is difficult because systems are distributed and integrated across a hybrid IT environment, creating potential vulnerabilities. Linking critical systems together can help you manage higher expectations. However, it complicates business continuity planning – along with resiliency, disaster recovery, security and regulatory compliance.
If one of the links in the chain breaks or is under attack, the impact can ripple throughout the entire business. An business can face revenue loss and erode customer trust if it fails to maintain the business resiliency, even while rapidly adapting and responding to opportunities and risks.
Business Continuity is an on-going cyclical process of risk assessment, management, and review to ensure that the business can continue if risks materialize. The effective implementation of business continuity has 6 stages:
- Policy and Program Management
- Embedding business continuity
- Implementation
What is the difference between Business Continuity Plan (BCP) and Business Continuity Management (BCM)?
BCP should be developed and implemented well in advance for a business to ensure its effectiveness. Business Continuity Management (BCM) is a structure for maintenance and management of the BCP. Most companies already may have countermeasures to avoid accidents and disasters. The application team's BCP should focus on what the people on that team need to do in order to continue supporting the application and bringing it back online.
What are the Types of Continuity Plans?
1. Business Continuity Plan (BC Plan) - A Business Continuity Plan or BC Plan comprises clearly defined and documented procedures and information for use when a disaster occurs.
2. Occupant Emergency Planning (OEP) - Occupant Emergency Planning or OEP is a process that provides the response procedures for the occupants of a facility in a situation posing a potential threat to personnel's health and safety environment or property.
3. Incident Response Plan (IR Plan) - Incident Response Plan is the documentation of the pre-determined set of instructions or procedures or to detect, respond to, and limit consequences of a cyber attack against an organization's IT systems.
4. Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP) - A Continuity of Operations Plan or COOP is a determined set of procedures or instructions that describe how an organization's essential functions will be sustained for up to 30 days as a result of a disaster event before returning to normal operations.
5. Disaster Recovery Plan (DR Plan) - A disaster recovery plan (DR Plan) is a clearly defined and documented plan describing how an organization deals with potential IT disasters.
6. Continuity of Support Plan (CS Plan) - Continuity of Support Plan or CS Plan is the documentation of a determined set of procedures or instructions that describe how to sustain major applications and general support systems in the event of significant disruption.
7. Business Resumption Plan (BRP) - Business Resumption Plan or BR plan is the documentation of the determined set of instructions or procedures that describe how business processes will be recovered, resume, and restored after a significant disruption has occurred.
What are the Business Continuity Strategies?
The output of the business continuity strategy would generally include a system for mitigation, crisis response, and recovery.
(a) Mitigation Strategy
The mitigation strategy comes from the risk assessment performed in the initial "Risk Analysis and Analysis phase". Therefore, risks that remain high in spite the presence of the mitigating controls should be reviewed.
The reasons to review are to check if:
- Are the controls that are implemented ineffectively? Are there other causes that drive the likelihood or impact the variables despite the controls?
- Are there multiple causes of a risk? Have we addressed all risks or only some of them? The high-risk threats can't be ignored and should be mitigated to the best of our abilities.
Some of these threats must be identified, and more attempts must be made to lower their risk. In addition, they must be implemented to prevent any potential disruption.
A mechanism should be in place to detect and sound the alarm should a threat materialize. These detection mechanisms could take the form of monitoring tools that records and captures abnormal changes in the environment or process.
While it is better to prevent disasters from happening, it is impossible to say with a hundred percent certainty that one will never occur. Therefore, in the unfortunate event that a disaster causes the business operations to be disrupted, a good strategy is required to ensure effective and timely recovery and resumption.
(b) Recovery Strategy
The recovery strategy should focus on re-establishing or re-gaining what has been lost in the disaster stage
- From people, systems, facilities, records, equipment, etc
- Know what has the disaster deprived the organization of?
- What resource need to be recovered to allow the organization to carry out its critical business functions?
- How quickly must these resources be made available?
- How to acquire these resources within the acceptable time frame?
- What resources could be built or developed by the organization in anticipation of a disaster?
- The model gives the highest level of recovery assurance as the critical resource is guaranteed.
- Facilities, like a hot site, could be built so that a vital functions can be immediately up and running during disaster.
An organization that does not choose not to own spare resources could lease the resource. Some organizations may choose to procure resources only when a disaster occurs. In developing the recovery strategy, you can consider getting back the resources needed to continue critical business operations. It would be best if you, kept in mind that the recovery is within the prescribed RTOs for these vital operations.
If a resource can not be recovered in this time, interim measures are often called Temporary Operating Procedures (TOP) are carried out.
(c) Crisis Response Strategy
Usually an organization does not have and incident management or response plan. Crisis response strategy should also include a response component that are the prioritized activities that the organization would undertake in a disaster. These activities include emergency responses, like situational assessment, evacuation, and modes of communication.
How do you Write a Good Business Continuity Plan?
A successful business continuity plan has the following elements:
1. Define the team structure
Create a core team with personnel from throughout the organization, including information technology, executive leaders, facilities and real estate, communications, physical security, human resources, finance, and other service departments. Develop a defined decision-making hierarchy. So that people do not wonder who has the responsibility or authority to make a given decision. Create a support teams devoted to related functions such as communications, business readiness, and emergency response
2. Establish a plan
Identify potential disruptions to your business process which can affect any of your organization's locations, such as epidemics, power outages, fires, etc. Try to base your plan on worst-case scenarios to keep the number of scenarios manageable. Always prioritize the essential operations and who will perform them. Determine how employees will work-from-home in the event of prolonged outages like the Covid-19 pandemic. Remember to update your plan annually to reflect changes in the criticality and dependency of applications, risk management, business priorities, business locations, operations and other considerations
3. Test your business continuity plan
Always conduct full emergency simulations annually. This includes crisis communications, safety drills, and workplace recovery processes. Remember to measure your test results and strive for continuous improvements, whether they are application availability goals or personnel safety assurances.
4. Create a crisis communications strategy
Establish emergency notification procedures. This should incorporate both push and pull systems to communicate quickly. Identify all the stakeholders for crisis emergency communications, including employees, clients, vendors, contractors, media and executive management. Have a scripted communication that can be easily updated and ready to transmit immediately for such situations.
5. Educate people on safety procedures
Always educate and train your workforce so that they are aware of the processes they should follow in the event of an emergency. Always consult with your local and federal agencies in emergency response training and other guidance for your program. Remember to conduct employee drills to help personnel become familiar with procedures, such as finding emergency exits
We have you covered with a ready to use BCP Template so you can have your business continuity plan ready in minutes.
What is the Difference between a BCP and a Disaster Recovery Plan?
Let us have a closer look at business continuity vs. disaster recovery plan:
- The BCP focuses on keeping business operational during a disaster, while disaster recovery focuses on restoring data access and IT infrastructure after a disaster. In other words, the BCP is concerned with keeping the shop open even under unusual or unfavorable circumstances. At the same time, the latter focuses on returning it to normal as soon as possible.
- The disaster recovery strategies mostly involve creating additional employee safety measures, such as conducting purchasing emergency supplies or fire drills. Combining the two plans allows a business to focus on maintaining operations and ensuring that employees are safe.
- The goal of a practical business continuity plan limit operational downtime. Meanwhile, effective disaster recovery plans limit abnormal or inefficient system functions.
- A BCP ensures communication methods such as phones and network servers continue operating amid a crisis. A disaster recovery strategy helps ensure an organization's ability to return to full functionality after a disaster occurs.
- The business continuity focuses on keeping the business open in some capacity, while disaster recovery focuses on getting operations back to its original normal.
- Some companies may incorporate disaster recovery strategies as part of their overall business continuity plans. Disaster recovery is a step in the broader process of safeguarding a company against all of its contingencies.
How can Deskera help with Business Continuity Planning?
Deskera helps with business continuity by making critical business processes systems independent. Deskera is an all-in-one online, cloud-based business software that helps businesses remove their dependency on centralized systems.
Move accounting, finance, sales, purchase, inventory management, leads management, sales operations, after sales support, payroll, leaves and expense management completely online with Deskera All In One Business Software.
With Deskera, you can run your business anywhere, any time. You can work in office, or remotely, from your laptop on a browser or on the award winning Deskera mobile app , to keep things running at all times.
Deskera gives you the overall view of how your business in running at the moment from anywhere. Deskera can help you view your inventory and view financial reports whenever you need them.
Deskera helps you automate your business with its fast CRM system, manage your employees with attendance and payroll, and finally manage your financial reports, inventory, shipping and finally banking integrations to keep track of your payments and revenue coming in.
Key Takeaways
- Business continuity planning (BCP) is the fundamental steps a business undergoes to create a recovery and prevention system from potential threats such as natural disasters or cyber-attacks
- Business impact analysis, organization, recovery, and training are all the steps corporations need to follow when creating a Business Continuity Plan
- BCPs are designed to protect assets and personnel to make sure they can function quickly whenever disaster strikes
- BCP should determine how those risks will affect operations
- BCP should implement safeguards and procedures to mitigate the risks
- BCPs should constantly be tested to ensure there are no weak links that can be identified and corrected.
- BCP should review and test the process to make sure that they work and it is up to date
Download the free BCP template here.
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What Exactly is BCM?
Often, as part of the discussion on business continuity management (BCM), there is a difference in the way the terms are defined. To ensure consistency in our training of BCM - which includes Crisis Management (CM), Crisis Communication (CC), IT Disaster Recovery Planning (DRP) and Operational Resilience (OR) professionals, the "BCM Umbrella" is one of the several diagrams used to integrate and better explain the holistic view
Business Continuity Management or BCM is a holistic management process for identifying potential impacts from threats, and for developing response plans. The key objective is to increase an organization's resilience to business disruptions and to minimize the impact of such disruptions.
BCM Planning Methodology
Potential threats can endanger the continuity of not only business processes but also, Information Technology (IT) infrastructures, as well as the continuity of supply chain processes. The result of applying the BCM Planning Methodology is a response and recovery plan that will minimize the debilitating impact of threats to allow the continuity of the various business processes.
From the "BCM Umbrella" shown above, an explanation of the disaster recovery for IT, business continuity, supply chain, and crisis.
Disruption to IT: Disaster Recovery Planning
Disaster Recovery Planning or DRP is a process of developing advanced arrangements and procedures that enable an organization to respond to a disaster and resume the critical business and IT applications within a predetermined period of time, minimize the amount of loss, and repair or replace the damaged facilities as soon as possible.
Often, it is spelt out as IT Disaster Recovery because the term "disaster recovery" is often confused or used synonymously with "disaster management".
Disruption to Continuity of Business: Business Continuity
Business Continuity Planning or BCP is the process of developing prior arrangements and procedures that enable an organization to respond to an event in such a manner that critical business functions can continue within planned levels of disruption. The end result of BCP is the BC Plan .
Disruption to Suppliers: Supply Chain Continuity
Supply Chain Continuity Management refers to the capability of ensuring an uninterrupted flow of products and services from suppliers to customers within an acceptable level and time frame so as to safeguard the prioritized activities of the organization and interested parties .
Disruption to Organization Due to Crisis
Crisis Management or CM is the overall coordination of an organization's response to a crisis , in an effective, timely manner, with the goal of avoiding or minimizing damage to the organization's profitability, reputation, or ability to operate.
The terms incidents, emergency and events will be explained in another blog.
It is important to note that definition is meaningful when everyone involved in the project or program has this common understanding. Often, I hear arguments amongst the team members and even senior management on the objectives of the plan. The bottom line is that they have not even established a common understanding of the terms.
I often had commented that the current definition is wrong and I replied that the key is that plans that are developed are consistent within that particular organization and most importantly, the team will work together with the objective of the "specific" plan being clear and concise to each member executing the plans.
Lastly, if you would like to continue to know more about Crisis and Business Continuity management learning journey , click " Implementing and Managing Your Business Continuity Program "
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What is Business Continuity Management (BCM)? Framework & Key Strategies
Home / Data Protection / What is Business Continuity Management (BCM)? Framework & Key Strategies
Business continuity management is a critical process. It ensures your company maintains normal business operations during a disaster with minimal disruption.
BCM works on the principle that good response systems mitigate damages from theoretical events .
What is Business Continuity Management? A Definition
Business continuity management is defined as the advanced planning and preparation of an organization to maintaining business functions or quickly resuming after a disaster has occurred. It also involves defining potential risks including fire, flood or cyber attacks.
Business leaders plan to identify and address potential crises before they happen. Then testing those procedures to ensure that they work, and periodically reviewing the process to make sure that it is up to date.
Business Continuity Management Framework
Policies and strategies.
Continuity management is about more than the reaction to a natural disaster or cyber attack. It begins with the policies and procedures developed, tested, and used when an incident occurs.
The policy defines the program’s scope, key parties, and management structure. It needs to articulate why business continuity is necessary and governance is critical in this phase.
Knowing who is responsible for the creation and modification of a business continuity plan checklist is one component. The other is identifying the team responsible for implementation. Governance provides clarity in what can be a chaotic time for all involved.
The scope is also crucial. It defines what business continuity means for the organization.
Is it about keeping applications operational, products and services available, data accessible, or physical locations and people safe? Businesses need to be clear about what is covered by a plan whether it’s revenue-generating components of the company, external facing aspects, or some other subset of the total organization.
Roles and responsibilities need to be assigned during this phase as well.
These may be roles that are obvious based on job function, or specific, given the type of disruption that may be experienced. In all cases, the policy, governance, scope, and roles need to be broadly communicated and supported.
Business Impact Assessment
The impact assessment is a cataloging process to identify the data your company holds, where it’s stored, how it’s collected, and how it’s accessed It determines which of those data are most critical and what the amount of downtime is that’s acceptable should that data or apps be unavailable.
While companies aim for 100 percent uptime, that rate is not always possible, even given redundant systems and storage capabilities. This phase is also the time when you need to calculate your recovery time objective, which is the maximum time it would take to restore applications to a functional state in the case of a sudden loss of service.
Also, companies should know the recovery point objective, which is the age of data that would be acceptable for customers and your company to resume operations. It can also be thought of as the data loss acceptability factor.
Risk Assessment
Risk comes in many forms. A Business Impact Analysis and a Threat & Risk Assessment should be performed.
Threats can include bad actors, internal players, competitors, market conditions, political matters (both domestic and international), and natural occurrences. A key component of your plan is to create a risk assessment that identifies potential threats to the enterprise.
Risk assessment identifies the broad array of risks that could impact the enterprise.
Identifying potential threats is the first step and can be far-reaching. This includes:
- The impact of personnel loss
- Changes in consumer or customer preferences
- Internal agility and ability to respond to security incidents with a plan
- Financial volatility
Regulated companies need to factor in the risk of non-compliance, which can result in hefty financial penalties and fines , increased agency scrutiny and the loss of standing, certification, or credibility.
Each risk needs to be articulated and detailed. In the next phase, the organization needs to determine the probability of each risk happening and the potential impact of each one. Likelihood and potential are key measures when it comes to risk assessment.
Once the risks have been identified and ranked, the organization needs to determine what its risk tolerance is for each potentiality. What are the most urgent, critical issues that need to be addressed? At this phase, potential solutions need to be identified, evaluated, and priced. With this new information, which includes probability and cost, the organization needs to prioritize which risks will be addressed.
The ranked risks then need to be evaluated as to which risks will be addressed first. Note that this process is not static. It needs to be regularly discussed to account for new threats that emerge as technologies, geopolitics, and competition evolves.
Validation and Testing
The risks and their impacts need to be continuously monitored, measured and tested. Once mitigation plans are in place, those also should be assessed to ensure they are working correctly and cohesively.
Incident Identification
With business continuity, defining what constitutes an incident is essential . Events should be clearly described in policy documents, as should who or what can trigger that an incident has occurred. These triggering actions should prompt the deployment of the business continuity plan as it is defined and bring the team into action.
- Disaster Recovery
What’s the difference between business continuity and disaster recovery ? The former is the overarching plans that guide operations and establish policy. Disaster recovery is what happens when an incident occurs.
Disaster recovery is the deployment of the teams and actions that are sprung. It is the net results of the work done to identify risks and remediate them. Disaster recovery is about specific incident responses, as opposed to broader planning.
After an incident, one fundamental task is to debrief and assess the response, and revising plans accordingly.
Role of Communication & Managing Business Continuity
Communication is an essential component of managing business continuity. Crisis communication is one component, ensuring that there are transparent processes for communicating with customers, consumers, employees, senior-level staff, and stakeholders. Consistent communication strategies are essential during and after an incident. Messaging must be consistent, accurate, and coming from a unified corporate voice.
Crisis management involves many layers of communication, including the creation of tools to indicate progress, critical needs, and issues. The types of communication may vary across constituencies but should be based on the same sources of information.
Resilience and Reputation Management
The risks of not having a business continuity plan are significant. The absence of preparing means the company is ill-prepared to address pressing issues.
These risks can leave a company flat-footed and can lead to other significant problems, including:
- Downtime for cloud-based servers, systems, and applications. Even minutes of downtime can result in the loss of substantial revenue.
- Credibility loss to reputation and brand identity. Widespread, consistent, or frequent downtime can erode confidence with customers and consumers. Customer retention can plummet.
- Regulatory compliance can be at risk in industries such as financial services, healthcare, and energy. If systems and data are not operational and accessible, the consequences are severe.
Prepare Today, Establish a Business Continuity Management Program
Managing business continuity is about data protection and integrity, the loss of which can be catastrophic.
It should be part of organizational culture. With a systematic approach to business continuity planning, businesses can expedite the recovery of critical activity.
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How much downtime can your business afford? What happens to your customer base if your company is down, but your competitors are able to operate? How much profit can you afford to lose without it crippling your business?
Today’s businesses cannot afford even minor disruptions. They cost time, money, market share and customer loyalty. Of course, there is a myriad of threats out there that can destabilize a company and lead to downtime, ranging from natural disasters like floods, fires and earthquakes to cyber-attacks, terrorist attacks and everything in between.
Business continuity planning helps ensure that you suffer as few repercussions of those disruptions as possible.
What is business continuity?
According to Ready.gov , a business continuity plan (BCP) is a tool designed to help ensure business disruptions are minimized, and the impact of those disruptions on revenue and profits is mitigated.
Business continuity actually involves four key elements:
- Conducting a business impact analysis
- Identifying, documenting and implementing critical business functions and processes for recovery
- Organizing a business continuity team
- Creating a business continuity plan
Training for the continuity team could be seen as a fifth element.
Why do you need a business continuity plan?
A business continuity plan is an essential consideration for ensuring disruptions have minimal impact on your company. But it’s about more than just “weathering the storm.” It’s about identifying and recognizing the threats your business faces, while simultaneously helping ensure assets are protected and your business personnel are not put at additional risk.
By first identifying threats, and then determining how those threats can affect your business, you can build safeguards that mitigate risk, helping ensure you can withstand attacks, natural disasters and even the effects of physical, violent attacks.
However, a good plan will also be tailored for other threats. For instance, in the case of a disease outbreak, how would your company operate? In the face of wildfires and mandatory evacuation, how would your business continue to serve customers?
What about how much time and money should you invest in planning and preparedness? There is no one-size-fits-all answer here, unfortunately. In truth, you should determine the extent of your efforts based on the results of your business impact analysis. Businesses in different industries, niches and even geographic areas will have widely varying needs in terms of planning and preparedness. In the end, your efforts should be customized to your company’s specific needs and risks.
What is the difference between business continuity planning & disaster recovery?
It can be easy to confuse disaster recovery (DR) with business continuity planning (BCP), as they’re similar. However, they are actually very different. Disaster recovery should be a part of your business continuity plan, but your business continuity plan should encompass far more than just disaster recovery.
In a nutshell, BCP comprises the plans and strategies that your business will follow to ensure it can continue to operate despite threats and disasters. Disaster recovery, on the other hand, actually refers to the collection of information technology solutions that will help with recovery if needed.
How do business continuity planning & disaster recovery work together?
As mentioned, business continuity planning refers to the strategies and plans implemented to ensure your business remains operational in the face of threats. Disaster recovery consists of technology and techniques harnessed should the worst happen. Both work together to help protect your business and reduce both the chance of data loss, as well as the impact of any data that might be lost.
For instance, your business continuity plan might require that the IT department audit business apps to determine criticality — which ones are the most important, and which areas can stand the least amount of data loss. Based on the results of the audit specified in your BCP, the IT team would then create disaster recovery solutions tailored to your unique risk tolerance and risk management needs. For instance, super-critical apps might have off-site data backups performed daily, while less-critical apps might have their data backed up once every three to five days.
What is the importance of business continuity in risk management & policy planning?
Risk management and policy planning are two crucial components of running a successful business, regardless of size or industry.
Risk management involves the identification of threats and risks, determining the effects of those risks on your company and then determining ways to minimize those risks. Policy planning is simply the planning and creation of policies that personnel within your organization will follow in regard to areas affected by risks.
Questions that should be covered during policy planning include:
- How often should your employees change their computer passwords?
- What is your policy on personal devices brought to the workplace?
- What is your policy regarding spam emails or obvious phishing attempts?
- What is your policy involving remote access of the company’s network?
These are just a fraction of the potential questions that should be covered during policy planning. Ultimately, risk management and policy planning should not be seen as separate from business continuity planning. They are both critical concepts that support BCP, along with others, such as program management, testing, risk awareness and more.
Ultimately, both business continuity planning and disaster recovery planning are vital to your business. Business continuity planning should revolve around business processes, while disaster recovery planning should center on the technology that allows you to respond and recover from emergencies, disasters, cyber-attacks and other threats.
- Introduction to Business Continuity , Business Continuity Institute
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- The difference between disaster recovery and business continuity , Dell
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Business Continuity Management (BCM) Explained
Business continuity management (BCM) is essential for business resilience. It’s part of a company’s broader plan for handling internal or external changes that disrupt or halt a business.
Table of Contents
What is business continuity management (BCM)?
Business continuity management is the set of proactive measures that a company takes in order to avoid loss as a result of major events that negatively impact a business. Such events include hostile mergers or acquisitions, change in leadership, natural disasters , ransomware attacks, data breaches, and other changes that impact company data and assets.
Key areas to safeguard in BCM include but are not limited to:
- Human resources
- Hardware and software
- Products, both physical and intellectual property
BCM entails several closely related activities. Some examples include disaster recovery , emergency management, incident management, and contingency planning. To maximize preparedness and resilience, some businesses purchase business interruption insurance (BII) after drafting a business impact analysis (BIA) to estimate losses for various scenarios.
In spite of doing all the right things—like applying patches to software, implementing a zero-trust policy , training employees, and other proactive security measures—a company can never completely shield itself against natural or malicious events. When an attack occurs, companies ideally have an up-to-date incident response plan (IRP) at the ready.
A company prepares for and handles the inevitable event that shakes up one or more aspects of the company’s operations, but then what? A business continuity plan rounds out disaster planning with a focus on recovery and resilience.
For more on how current work models impact IT security, also read: Work-From-Anywhere Requires More Resilient IT
Benefits of BCM
There are many benefits to implementing BCM that make it well worth the investment.
Reduce downtime and cost
With an effective business continuity plan in place, your business quickly snaps back into normal operations. Reduced downtime feeds into fewer losses not only in terms of revenue but also customers and employees. BCM decreases the likelihood of your business coming to a grinding halt or, worse, closing.
The quicker your company gets back up and running, the fewer losses it suffers as a result. Implementing business continuity also safeguards your organization from becoming ensnared in litigation for negligence and potentially paying hefty fines.
Improve reputation
Successfully navigating a detrimental situation by protecting customer, partner, employee, and vendor data wins over the trust of parties involved. BCM puts stakeholders at ease that their data, assets, and investments are in good hands.
Gain insights
When incidents occur, they present valuable learning opportunities. Your company has the benefit of wisdom to further improve its response measures. You’ll also have a better idea of what to expect in the event of an attack on or disruption to the company’s operations.
A business continuity plan is not a one-off task. It requires continuous revision as threats and your business evolve. As your business grows and changes over time, you’ll need regular updates to your plan.
BCM use case examples
BCM is more of a priority in some industries than in others.
Financial institutions hold a lot of sensitive information about consumer and business financials, credit information, and more. Therefore, businesses within this industry are subject to multiple governing bodies.
For example, the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council ( FFIEC ) enforces a set of standards that US financial institutions must adhere to. One set of standards for them to follow pertains to cybersecurity awareness and ensures institutions identify, assess, and mitigate cybersecurity risks to their businesses and their third-party service providers.
HIPAA requires companies in the healthcare sector to protect patient privacy, data, and records. For example, HIPAA’s Security Rule declared national standards that insurance companies, medical providers, etc. must abide by to protect patient health information. This means that they need appropriate administrative, physical and technical safeguards to protect patient data.
SaaS and the supply chain
Companies frequently vet third-party SaaS vendors, requiring a business continuity plan in order to conduct business with them. A company will want to know what preventative measures that SaaS company takes. That way, if something goes wrong, the SaaS company will have a plan to minimize down-chain disruptions.
Read more at IT Business Edge: How to Prevent Third-Party Vulnerabilities
Pro tips for BCM
- Brainstorm and note as many potential, realistic scenarios as possible
- Have a plan and back-up plans for each scenario
- Each plan within BCM needs objectives and policies that align with those objectives
- Measure the performance of each scenario-plan within the broader business continuity plan
- Continuously evaluate and, if needed, revise parts of your business continuity plan
- Invest in business continuity software to help manage and update the business continuity plans
Not a matter of “if” but “when”: Is your business ready?
Could your company, in its current state, cope with a formidable event? Could it resume operations without missing a beat, perhaps emerge even stronger?
The effort and foresight that you put into business continuity management will be a key factor in determining how quickly your business bounces back from a setback.
Read next: How to Create a Business Continuity Plan
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Enterprise Risk Management vs. Business Continuity Management: What’s the Difference?
A lot of organizations that are just embarking upon their enterprise risk management journey have questions about the basic terminology involved. In this blog post, we want to tackle some basic terms that are often—incorrectly!—used interchangeably. Enterprise risk management vs. business continuity management: Let’s break it down.
How to define enterprise risk management and business continuity?
In our webinar with Sphera [formerly riskmethods] customer Clariant, we got asked a very interesting question from one of the participants: “What’s the difference between enterprise risk management and business continuity management?”
Great question. And, like most great questions, the answer is a little fuzzy.
At the end of the day, enterprise risk management and business continuity management are tightly linked. The best way to think about it is probably this: Enterprise risk management (ERM) is about processes that are enacted before a disaster occurs, because enterprise risk management is concerned with protecting a business from risk by identifying the existence of vulnerabilities and defining a way to minimize their probability.
Business continuity management (BCM), on the other hand, is about processes that are designed to be enacted after a disaster has occurred, because business continuity management is the process of maintaining business operations during or after an actual disaster, which is executed through the use of business continuity plans.
To put a different spin on it, let’s use a hiking analogy. Enterprise risk management is the part of the hike where you pack your survival kit full of flares—and business continuity management is the part of the hike where you shoot off those flares because you’ve broken your leg and can’t move.
The difference between ERM and BCM
One of the key differences between ERM and BCM is their approaches. Due to the preventive nature of ERM programs, enterprise risk management is a largely strategic undertaking—it’s focused on understanding and planning for hypothetical situations. Business continuity management, on the other hand, is much more tactical—it’s focused on the actual way that an organization should act when a business disruption occurs.
How ERM and BCM work together?
In many organizations, enterprise risk management and business continuity management are likely managed by the same team, since they’re so tightly intertwined—after all, it’s not possible to create a business continuity plan for a risk event if you don’t have a good sense of what risk events are likely to occur. By the same token, it’s not possible to adequately protect a business against disruption without a plan to address it when it happens. In other words: if your business has risk managers and business continuity managers, you better make sure they’re the best of friends.
But regardless of how your company is set up, here’s the bottom line: risk management and business continuity management are both critical functions if you want to keep your organization running. And although ERM and BCM are large topics that encompass a number of types of risk, a significant chunk of those risks have to do with your organization’s ability to produce its product—which is heavily impacted by your supply network.
riskmethods was acquired by Sphera in October 2022. This content originally appeared on the riskmethods website and was slightly modified for sphera.com.
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- Disaster recovery planning and management
business continuity policy
- Erin Sullivan, Site Editor
What is a business continuity policy?
A business continuity policy is the set of standards and guidelines an organization enforces to ensure resilience and proper risk management. Business continuity policies vary by organization and industry and require periodic updates as technologies evolve and business risks change.
The goal of a business continuity policy is to document what is needed keep an organization running on ordinary business days as well as times of emergency. When the policy is well-defined and clearly adhered to, the company can set realistic expectations for business continuity and disaster recovery ( BC/DR ) processes. This policy can also be used to determine what went wrong so the problems can be addressed. Ultimately, a business continuity policy is created and enforced at the organization's discretion, following its industry and compliance requirements.
While business continuity policies are different for every company, they all include basic components. Key components of business continuity policy include staffing, metrics and standard requirements.
Internal staffing in a business continuity policy should outline the roles and responsibilities of department heads, corporate management liaisons and members of the BC/DR team. It may also include external personnel such as vendors, stakeholders and customers. Keeping track of everyone involved in and affected by the business continuity policy is a key to ensuring compliance.
This article is part of
What is BCDR? Business continuity and disaster recovery guide
- Which also includes:
- Business resilience vs. business continuity: Key differences
- A free business continuity plan template and guide
- Preparing an annual schedule of business continuity activities
Download this entire guide for FREE now!
Common metrics in a policy may include key performance indicators ( KPIs ) and key risk indicators ( KRIs ). KPIs are used by corporate executives and managers to analyze crucial functions and processes required to meet goals and performance targets. KRIs measure the likelihood of an event affecting the company, These can help plan risk management.
The International Organization for Standardization and the British Standards Institution issue common business continuity standards . These standards are occasionally updated, so changes should be monitored.
What are some important BC policy considerations?
The primary thing to consider when crafting a business continuity policy is the particular risks an organization is likely to face. Is the company in an area that frequently has hurricanes or other major weather events? Is there a geopolitical element that could bring failures? Have there been problems with ransomware or other malware in the past that need particular attention? Organizations should take all these factors into account when creating a business continuity policy.
A risk assessment is a reliable method of figuring out potential threats and determining their likelihood. A risk assessment identifies potential hazards and provides ways to reduce the impact of them on the business. Similar to a business continuity policy, risks assessments differ, but follow general steps:
- Identify the hazards;
- Determine what or who could be harmed;
- Evaluate the risks and create control measures;
- Record the findings;
- Review and update the assessment.
Along with a risk assessment, conducting a business impact analysis (BIA) can help form the backbone of a business continuity policy. A BIA determines the effects of a potential disaster on an organization by finding existing vulnerabilities. Though similar to a risk assessment, a BIA often takes place first, and focuses primarily on the business impact and meeting recovery time and recovery point objectives.
Business continuity policy oversight and verification is another element to be aware of, if there are legal requirements that must be followed. Leadership, such as a company executive, may be designated as a liaison to the BC/DR team, coordinating efforts to resolve any compliance issues. The BC/DR team itself may be placed in charge of verifying policy compliance, along with any necessary internal departments. Along with setting the procedures and staffing, the BC/DR team should regularly verify policy compliance.
If non-compliance is found according to the policy, corporate management may be brought in to address it.
When to bring in a BC/DR vendor
While creating a business continuity policy is a company decision, taking a look at BC/DR vendors and what services they provide can help the process. Managed BC/DR vendors can take some of the work out of an organization's hands and help facilitate tests of a business continuity strategy.
With the wider availability of the cloud, disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) is a popular BC/DR option. DRaaS comes in all shapes and sizes, which makes it an appealing option when deciding on a BC/DR plan. Able to handle minor issues to major disasters, DRaaS is a fairly universal method to implement.
Major DRaaS providers include Acronis , Amazon Web Services , Axcient, IBM, Unitrends, VMware and Zerto .
Business continuity policy vs. business continuity plan: How are they different?
A business continuity policy and business continuity plan (BCP) have a lot in common, in that they address all of the unique requirements and preparations for an organization to maintain continuity. They both serve different purposes within the organization, however. While the policy outlines the standards to be followed and benchmarks to be met, a plan maps out from beginning to end how the organization will get through an event. Business continuity policy information should be included in the business continuity plan, but as a separate entity.
Continue Reading About business continuity policy
- How does business continuity fit in with other management functions?
- Here are 9 skills BC managers should have
- Get started on business continuity policy with this template
- Small businesses have their own BC needs
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Integrated functional safety and cybersecurity evaluation in a framework for business continuity management.
1. Introduction
2. brief presentation of the framework and components, 2.1. overview of it and ot systems and their convergence, 2.2. functional safety of ot systems.
- The requirements imposed on the performance of safety functions designed for hazard identification;
- The safety integrity requirements, i.e., the probability that a safety function will be performed in a satisfactory way when a potentially hazardous situation occurs.
- The probability of failure on demand average (PFD avg ) of the safety-related ICS in which the considered safety function is implemented, operating in a low-demand mode (LDM); or
- The probability of dangerous failure per hour (PFH) of the safety-related ICS operating in a high- or continuous-demand mode (HCM).
- A plan for operating and maintaining E/E/PE safety-related systems or SIS;
- Operation, maintenance, and repair procedures for these systems over their whole life cycle;
- Implementing procedures;
- Following maintenance schedules;
- Maintaining relevant documentation;
- Periodically carrying out functional safety audits;
- Documenting any modifications to the hardware and software in E/E/PE systems.
- The results of functional safety audits and tests;
- Documentation on the time and cause of demands on E/E/PE safety-related systems in actual operation the performance of the E/E/PE safety-related systems when subject to those demands, and any faults found during routine testing and maintenance;
- Documentation of any modifications made to safety-related ICS, including equipment under control (EUC).
2.3. Cybersecurity of IT Systems
- FR 1—Identification and authentication control (IAC);
- FR 2—Use control (UC);
- FR 3—System integrity (SI);
- FR 4—Data confidentiality (DC);
- FR 5—Restricted data flow (RDF);
- FR 6—Timely response to events (TRE);
- FR 7—Resource availability (RA).
2.4. Integrated Functional Safety and Cybersecurity Evaluation
- SL-T (target SAL)—Desired level of security;
- SL-C (capability SAL)—Security level that the device can provide when properly configured;
- SL-A (achieved SAL)—Actual level of security of a particular device.
2.5. Scope of BCM
- Identifying potential threats that might cause adverse impacts on an organization’s business operations, and associated risks;
- Providing a framework for building resilience for business operations;
- Providing capabilities, facilities, processes, and elaborated action task lists, etc., for effective responses to disasters and failures.
2.6. BCM in Energy Companies
- Failures in logistics chains, delays in delivery of raw materials or semi-finished products by business partners, and/or delays in providing services, spare parts etc.
- Failures in electric energy distributed systems
- Power transformer station failures fires, cyberattacks, etc.
- Physical or cyberattack
- Failures and outages of ICT and CT (cloud technology) systems and networks designed using wired and/or wireless technology
- Failures and outages of OT systems and networks, including production lines and storage, and/or malfunctions of industrial automation and control systems (IACS)
- Extreme environmental phenomena, lightning storms, heavy rain, local flooding, flood, hurricane, or tornado, extremely high or low temperature, and heavy snowfall or icing
- Disturbances in critical infrastructure objects and systems needed to deliver water, electricity, gas etc.
- Fire or explosion
- Extreme emission of pollutants and/or dangerous substances
- Destruction due to potentially critical events in physical surroundings or infrastructure installations
- Earthquake and/or tsunami (at sites close to the shore)
- Sabotage, terrorism, or cyberterrorism against critical infrastructure objects/systems inspired by an external principal or agent
- Legislative changes
- Key products and services are identified and protected, ensuring their continuity;
- Incident management capability is enabled to provide an effective response;
- The company understands its relationships with cooperating companies/organizations, relevant regulators and authorities, and emergency services;
- Staff are trained to respond effectively to an incident or disruption through appropriate exercises;
- Stakeholders’ requirements are understood and able to be delivered;
- Staff receive adequate support and communications in the event of a disruption;
- The company’s supply chain is better secured;
- The organization’s reputation is protected and remains compliant with its legal and regulatory obligations.
- Detection of all information security incidents (and weaknesses) and related escalation procedures and channels;
- Reporting and logging of all information security incidents and weaknesses;
- Logging all responses and preventive and corrective actions taken;
- Periodic evaluation of all information security incidents and weaknesses;
- Learning from reviews of information security incidents(and weaknesses and making improvements to security and to the information security incident and weakness management scheme.
- Resumption of product or service delivery after an incident, or resumption of a performance activity after an incident;
- Recovery of the ICT (information and communication technology) system or computer application after an incident, such as a hacker attack, or IT-OT system failure or functional abnormality, such as abnormal performance of the industrial automation and control system (IACS).
3. Proposed Integrated Functional Safety and Cybersecurity Evaluation in the Framework of BCM
- Formulating policies, goals, and domain, including legal and regulatory requirements and relevant standards and publications of good practice;
- Criteria for risk evaluation and reduction concerning dependability, safety, and security aspects, including domain key performance indicators (KPIs);
- Updated evidence, results of audits in design and plant operation, and results of modelling to support relevant decisions.
- Physical resilience and security of company resources and assets;
- Information and communication technology (ICT) resilience and security management over the whole life cycle;
- Adequate resilience and security of the industrial automation and control system (IACS) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system in a specific industrial network/domain and required security assurance level (SAL) [ 26 ];
- Safety-related control systems designed and operated according to the functional safety concept with the required safety integrity level (SIL) [ 27 ];
- Industrial installations and processes with the required physical and functional protection measures;
- Infrastructure integrity for delivery of raw materials and energy (electricity, gas, oil) needed for production processes;
- Equipment reliability/availability adequately maintained according to the strategy developed to achieve, for instance, a satisfactory level of overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).
4. Case Study
4.1. safety aspects, 4.2. safety-related ics aspects, 4.3. risk treatment, 4.4. business continuity management impact, 4.5. summary, 5. conclusions, author contributions, institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.
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Share and Cite
Kosmowski, K.T.; Piesik, E.; Piesik, J.; Śliwiński, M. Integrated Functional Safety and Cybersecurity Evaluation in a Framework for Business Continuity Management. Energies 2022 , 15 , 3610. https://doi.org/10.3390/en15103610
Kosmowski KT, Piesik E, Piesik J, Śliwiński M. Integrated Functional Safety and Cybersecurity Evaluation in a Framework for Business Continuity Management. Energies . 2022; 15(10):3610. https://doi.org/10.3390/en15103610
Kosmowski, Kazimierz T., Emilian Piesik, Jan Piesik, and Marcin Śliwiński. 2022. "Integrated Functional Safety and Cybersecurity Evaluation in a Framework for Business Continuity Management" Energies 15, no. 10: 3610. https://doi.org/10.3390/en15103610
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Business Continuity Management (Complete Guide)
Organisations may be exposed to the risk of unexpected disruption to their business operations such as natural disaster, fire, flood, supply chain disruption, cyber attack, employee strike and pandemic. Such events can severely impact revenue, profitability and even survival.
To protect your organisation and ensure that business operations continue to function when such events occur, you must establish a business continuity management system (BCM).
By the end of this article, you will be equipped with knowledge on:
• What is business continuity management?
• What are the 3 main areas of business continuity management?
• What is the difference between a business continuity plan (BCP) and BCM?
• What are the key elements of business continuity management?
• What are the steps in business continuity management?
What is business continuity management?
Business Continuity Management (BCM) is the management process that oversees and implement strategies to address the risk of unexpected disruptions. It covers emergency response, risk management, planning, business continuity plan (BCP), training, testing and improvements.
What are the 3 main areas of business continuity management?
There are three main areas in the processes of business continuity management:
1. Establishment
2. Implementation
3. Continuous improvement
These processes and their interactions are needed for an effective and comprehensive business continuity management that will help your organisation identify potential threats and recover from any form of disruptions or threats to your business functions. These three areas will be covered in greater detail under the steps in BCM.
What is the difference between BCP and BCM?
BCP is a plan that your organisation can develop to perform the necessary actions to recover from unexpected disruptions and resume normal operations again.
BCM is the management process to oversee and implement strategies to address the risk of unexpected disruptions or crises and minimise the impact on business operations. Disruptions can include floods, fires, workers strikes, supply chain cut-off, pandemic, computer system hacked, etc.
What are the key elements of business continuity management?
BCM is a holistic management process that integrates various elements, namely Business Continuity Plan (BCP), Emergency Response, Crisis Management, Disaster Recovery, Risk Management, Business Impact Analysis, Resilience and Reputation Management.
1. BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLAN (BCP)
BCP is an integral part of BCM that focuses on resuming operations during an unplanned disruption until it returns to normal again. The plan outlines the strategies and actions required by the organisation, which is more comprehensive than a disaster recovery plan. It contains contingency plans for every aspect of your business operations that may be affected, such as financial services, human resources, productions, inventory management, distributions, external suppliers and business partners etc. The BCP must detail the roles and responsibilities of various key stakeholders and be shared with top management for their agreement and sign-off.
2. EMERGENCY RESPONSE
This is often seen as one of the critical elements in BCM that require the most resources and management’s attention. It requires very urgent intervention to mobilise people and various resources to bring an incident under control quickly. An emergency can include natural disasters, pandemics or major accidents etc. The response usually focuses heavily on the protection and safety of lives, the company’s assets, health and the environment.
3. CRISIS MANAGEMENT
This is a process to manage a response to a crisis or major event affecting your business operations in order to stabilise and effectively control the situation and recover your operations in the quickest time possible. Crisis can be attributed to impending changes related to the country’s social, political, economic, environmental or security situation. It often causes uncertainty and threats to the organisation’s goals.
4. DISASTER RECOVERY
A key component of BCM is disaster recovery. It includes the activation of the recovery team to carry out the necessary actions in handling a specific disruption when an incident happens. For example, when there is an IT disruption to the organisation’s network servers or cyber attacks, the disaster recovery plan will include workarounds or the use of backup systems to recover critical IT assets or systems so that your business operations can continue until they are restored. An essential aspect of disaster recovery is reviewing and assessing the recovery time objective after the incident to address any shortcomings and revise the plan for future implementation.
5. BUSINESS IMPACT ANALYSIS
This analysis is conducted to help your company identifies potential threats and possible risks that your organisation is exposed to and analyse the impact of the disruption if it happens. It is an essential element of BCM as it supports the business continuity process. It involves reviewing all critical activities within your business functions and the recovery point objective and time frame required to minimise the impact of a disruption.
6. RISK MANAGEMENT
Another key component of BCM is the creation of Risk Management to identify the broad array of potential risks to your organisation, covering resources (human, property, equipment and facilities), financial assets, operations, regulatory compliance, information security etc. The probability or likelihood of each risk occurring and their potential impact and severity have to be evaluated, assessed, ranked and measured against your organisation’s risk tolerance to prioritise which risks to address or mitigate first relative to the others.
7. RESILIENCE AND REPUTATION MANAGEMENT
BCM is a very fundamental and significant aspect of business operations in any organisation. BCM is itself a risk to the organisation if it is not managed effectively or adequately. Your organisation needs to be prepared for any unexpected disruptions or incidents so that it can protect or resume its operations and continue to function and recover from the adversity. Having an effective BCM process in place can help companies meet regulatory compliance and manage and protect their reputation and build organisational resilience, thereby protecting the brand and enhancing their competitive advantage.
What are the steps in business continuity management?
Establishment
Establish a BCM system by first creating a team to manage the various processes. Your top management must show commitment and support to the team by providing the necessary resources and training competent people with defined responsibilities.
Carry out a risk assessment of your organisation. You will need to identify and evaluate the risks or possible disruptions your organisation is exposed to and determine the severity and likelihood of different threat scenarios.
Perform a business impact analysis (BIA). This is to assess the potential impact to the different functions within your business operations in the event of a disruption and the maximum time required to resume operations or recover from it.
Implementation
After the management team has been formed, with risk assessment and business impact analysis performed, the next phase is the implementation, which will utilise the results and findings from your risk assessment and business impact analysis.
Develop strategies and create a BCP and implement these recovery strategies across your organisation. These strategies and plans must be detailed, comprehensive, realistic and effective so that every stakeholder involved can understand and be guided on their roles and responsibilities. Do include the actions to be taken in the event a disruption strikes.
Continuous improvement
The final phase is continuous improvement.
Carry out regular testing of your BCP to ensure that the entire organisation is thoroughly trained and prepared for any disruption to your operations. This is typically performed through annual simulation exercises to ensure all stakeholders are fully aware of their respective actions in response to various scenarios or disruptions that can affect the business operations.
Periodically review your business continuity plan to make improvements to the existing BCP. Through the tabletop exercises in step five, your organisation can identify new threats, fine-tune and adjust in accordance with any changes in the business process so that your existing plans will continuously improve, adapt and update to accurately and effectively respond to new different scenarios.
Business Continuity Management plays a very critical role in every organisation. For your company to continue its business operations when disruptions occur, you will need to establish, implement and continuously improve your business continuity management processes.
ISO 22301 is the international standard that helps organisations craft business continuity plans to protect them and help them recover from disruption when an incident occurs. It also helps companies identify potential threats to their businesses and build the capacity to deal with unforeseen events with an adequate response.
Stendard can help your organisation by providing business continuity management consulting services with experienced consultants. If you have any questions regarding business continuity, please feel free to drop us an inquiry.
At Stendard, we believe that quality is everyone’s business because it takes a team to consistently deliver and uphold excellent standards that build confidence with customers, partners and the community. We are a competent group of experts who can provide consultancy support and advice on using technological platforms for your company through this journey.
As always, if you have any queries or questions, feel free to contact us.
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A business continuity plan without effective management processes would not be a functional plan in the event of a business disruption. On the other hand, business continuity management processes would be of little value during an adverse event without the development of a well-documented plan. For example
Business continuity management is a process managed outside IT that identifies risks to the business and works to mitigate those risks. Some risks may be IT-related, including disaster-level incidents, and some risks may be outside IT control, such as natural disasters or facility fires. Since BCM encompasses ITSCM as well as other risk ...
In short, BCM is the process of ensuring that a FI is prepared for potential business disruptions. It includes resiliency, continuity, and response capabilities for critical functions and activities. The BCM plan can be triggered by any type of event from a cyberattack to a tornado.
An Overview of BCM. Described in Wikipedia, "Business Continuity is the intended outcome of proper execution of Business continuity planning and Disaster recovery. It is the payoff for cost-effective buying of spare machines and servers, performing backups and bringing them off-site, assigning responsibility, performing drills, educating ...
Business Continuity Management (BCM) integrates the disciplines of Emergency Response, Crisis Management, Disaster Recovery (technology continuity) and Business Continuity (organizational/operational relocation). Throughout the profession, definitions of Business Continuity Management abound.
1) The Business Continuity Plan (BCP) The Business Continuity Plan is a written document that outlines every aspect of the company's disaster preparedness, response and recovery. It is the fundamental piece of BCM Business Continuity Management.
What is Business Continuity? Business Continuity capabilities are an organization'sability to protect and sustain critical business processes during a disruption. Effective business continuity management (BCM) ensures that firms are equipped with the ability to prevent, respond to and recover from various operational disruptions.
Business Continuity Management (BCM) is the management process that oversees and implement strategies to address the risk of unexpected disruptions. It covers emergency response, risk management, planning, business continuity plan (BCP), training, testing and improvements. What are the 3 main areas of business continuity management?
The main difference between a business continuity plan and a disaster recovery plan is that the former encompasses the latter—that is, business continuity planning includes disaster recovery planning. ... ISO 22301:2019 is the international standard for business continuity management (BCM) systems, ... This free collection of BCP templates ...
Business continuity means anticipating such disruptions and preparing a plan to ensure that you can continue business operations if the disruptions materialize. We can use the Plan Do Check Act (PDCA) cycle to describe the activities involved in business continuity management: Plan Planning for business continuity mainly involves:
Business Continuity is an on-going cyclical process of risk assessment, management, and review to ensure that the business can continue if risks materialize. The effective implementation of business continuity has 6 stages: Policy and Program Management Embedding business continuity Analysis Design Implementation Validation
Business Continuity Management or BCM is a holistic management process for identifying potential impacts from threats, and for developing response plans. The key objective is to increase an organization's resilience to business disruptions and to minimize the impact of such disruptions. BCM Planning Methodology
Business continuity management is defined as the advanced planning and preparation of an organization to maintaining business functions or quickly resuming after a disaster has occurred. It also involves defining potential risks including fire, flood or cyber attacks.
As mentioned, business continuity planning refers to the strategies and plans implemented to ensure your business remains operational in the face of threats. Disaster recovery consists of technology and techniques harnessed should the worst happen.
Business and organizational resilience tend to refer to an ongoing refinement process and adaption to reflect evolving conditions. Whereas business continuity is all about immediate crisis response and subsequent rebuilding, maybe operational resilience sits somewhere in the middle.
A Business Continuity Management (BCM) plan is a documented strategy that outlines procedures and protocols to be followed in case of a major business disruption. The plan typically includes a comprehensive set of procedures and guidelines that outline how the organization will recover critical functions and processes, communicate with ...
Business continuity management is the set of proactive measures that a company takes in order to avoid loss as a result of major events that negatively impact a business. Such events include hostile mergers or acquisitions, change in leadership, natural disasters, ransomware attacks, data breaches, and other changes that impact company data and ...
Business continuity management (BCM), on the other hand, is about processes that are designed to be enacted after a disaster has occurred, because business continuity management is the process of maintaining business operations during or after an actual disaster, which is executed through the use of business continuity plans.
IT continuity (information technology continuity) is a holistic approach to managing technology systems in the event of a major disruption.
A business continuity policy is the set of standards and guidelines an organization enforces to ensure resilience and proper risk management. Business continuity policies vary by organization and industry and require periodic updates as technologies evolve and business risks change. The goal of a business continuity policy is to document what ...
This article outlines an integrated functional safety and cybersecurity evaluation approach within a framework for business continuity management (BCM) in energy companies, including those using Industry 4.0 business and technical solutions. In such companies, information and communication technology (ICT), and industrial automation and control system (IACS) play important roles.
A business continuity plan describes how a company can continue to operate or serve its customers despite environmental threats. In times of crisis, a company's ultimate goal is to maintain ...
Organisations may be exposed to the risk of unexpected disruption to their business operations such as natural disaster, fire, flood, supply chain disruption, cyber attack,...