Business Continuity Planning
Business continuity planning refers to the process of creating systems of prevention and recovery that helps in dealing with potential threats to a company. The aim is not only prevention but also to enable the ongoing operations before and during the execution of disaster recovery. In this article, we will discuss business continuity planning.
Business continuity can also be described as maintenance of business functions or quickly resuming them in the event of a major disruption. That can be caused by a number of things such as a fire, natural calamity, or malicious attack by cybercriminals. A business continuity plan refers to processes and techniques the organizations opt-in a situation of such disasters. Majorly, it covers business processes, assets, human resources, business partners, etc. It is a common notion that a disaster recovery plan is the same as a business continuity plan, but in reality, a disaster recovery plan focuses majorly on restoring infrastructure and other operations after a crisis. Thus disaster recovery is just a part of the complete business continuity plan because a business continuity plan looks at the continuity of the entire organization.
Importance
Business continuity planning is of great importance because when you operate a small business or even a large corporation, you always strive to remain competitive. It is important to retain your current customers while increasing your customer base. There is no better way to test your capability than right after an adverse event. For restoring an infrastructure, as is critical for most companies, a number of disaster recovery solutions are available. You have to always rely on business continuity planning to implement these solutions. The future of your company depends on your people and processes. The capability to handle any incident effectively is essential. It will have a positive effect on your company’s reputation and market value. It can also help to increase customer confidence.
Business Continuity Plan
Maybe your organization does not have a business continuity plan yet. In that situation, you should start by assessing your business processes. You also need to determine which areas are vulnerable, and the potential losses if those processes go down for a day, a few days or a week. It is important to develop a plan that involves a number of steps. You need to identify the scope of the plan, key business areas, and critical functions. It is also essential to identify the dependencies between various business areas and functions. It is important to determine acceptable downtime for each critical function. You also need to create a plan to maintain operations.
Business Continuity Planning Tools
A lot of business continuity planning tools are used. The most common is a checklist that includes supplies and equipment and the location of data backups and backup sites. It should also include where the plan is available and who should have it. You also need to add the contact information for emergency responders, key personnel, and backup site providers. Basically there are three primary aspects to a business continuity plan that include high availability, continuous operations, and disaster recovery.
