In today’s fast-paced business environment, a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is essential to ensure that operations can continue in the face of unexpected disruptions.
A well-designed BCP takes into consideration key scenarios that may disrupt the business and provide clear and understandable steps on how these will be overcome or mitigated.
Some of these scenarios may include Natural disasters, Cyber Attacks, Supply Chain Disruptions, Power Outages or even human errors.
Considering all those scenarios, there are a few key components that must be considered when creating a good BCP:
Business Impact Analysis:
Determine the financial, operational, and reputational consequences of a disruption to your business. This will allow recovery efforts to be prioritised and critical operations to continue.
Crisis Management Plan:
Create a plan to control the immediate response to a disruption, including communication channels, emergency response, and BCP activation. Don’t forget to include who will be nominated to activate your BCP and always ensure there is enough contingency in your activation procedure.
Business Recovery Plan:
Create a plan to recover critical business functions and operations, such as IT systems, communications, and supply chains. It should outline the steps needed to resume normal operations of each function as soon as possible.
Your IT department will need to know some details about your critical systems:
- RTO (Recovery Time Objective): How fast you need a system to be back up and running
- RPO (Recovery Point Objective): How much data or work are you willing to accept in your systems before it becomes an issue.
- Systems dependencies: not all systems can start on their own and depend on other systems to correctly work.
Training and testing:
Ensure that training plans for all employees are included in your BCP this must ensure they are aware of their roles and responsibilities in the event of a disruption. Regular testing and simulations can help identify areas for improvement and guarantee the BCP’s effectiveness. One of the most regular tests that should be performed includes backup and recovery of critical systems.
Maintenance and review:
Review and update the BCP regularly to ensure it remains current and effective. This includes examining changes to business operations, information technology systems, and potential risks.
In conclusion
Given the high reliance on many technical processes and technologies that are required for proper business operations, BCP is typically completed by IT departments. However, as we have discovered, IT departments must collaborate closely with the rest of the business to deliver a good plan.
