Your Guide to Developing a Business Continuity Plan

A business continuity plan (BCP) is a comprehensive strategy designed to ensure that essential business functions can continue in the event of a disruption such as natural disasters, cyberattacks, or other emergencies.

More specifically, a BCP identifies potential risks and vulnerabilities to an organization’s critical business functions, sets up a framework to ensure the safety of employees, customers, and stakeholders, and establishes protocols for a business to resume operations after a disruption.

In this article, we will outline 7 steps to developing, implementing, testing, and maintaining your BCP that will ensure your organization’s continued operations in the face of disaster.

Defining the scope and objectives of your BCP is an important first step in the planning process. Determine what aspects of your business you want to protect, the scope of the plan’s coverage, and the specific objectives the plan aims to achieve.

By defining the scope and objectives, you can ensure that it is focused on protecting the most critical aspects of your business and is aligned with your organization’s overall goals and priorities.

Begin by identifying potential risks that could impact your business. These risks could include natural disasters, such as hurricanes, earthquakes, or floods, as well as man-made disasters, such as cyberattacks, power outages, or supply chain disruptions.

Once you have identified potential risks, assess the likelihood and potential impact of each risk. Consider the likelihood of the risk occurring, as well as the severity of the impact on your business. This will help you prioritize your response efforts.

Determine your organization’s risk tolerance, or the level of risk that you are willing to accept.

Develop strategies for mitigating or managing the identified risks. This could include strategies for preventing or minimizing the risk’s impact and for responding to and recovering from it.

By developing a risk assessment, you can identify potential risks to your business and develop strategies for mitigating or managing those risks. This can help ensure that your BCP protects your business from disasters and disruptions.

A business impact analysis (BIA) is a process of identifying critical business functions and determining their potential impact if they were to be disrupted. Performing a BIA will help you prioritize your recovery efforts and determine the resources needed to restore your operations. Here are some key steps to conducting a BIA.

Identify the critical business functions that must be maintained during a disruption. These are essential to the survival and success of the business, such as payroll processing, order fulfillment, or customer service.

Determine the impact that a disruption to each critical business function would have on the business. This might include financial, operational, and reputational impacts. Consider the length of downtime, the number of people affected, and the cost of recovery.

Determine the maximum amount of time that each critical business function can be offline without causing significant damage to the business. This will help guide the development of recovery strategies.

Identify the internal and external dependencies for each critical business function. This might include dependencies on people, technology, facilities, or suppliers.

Based on the results of your risk assessment and business impact analysis, you can identify the critical business functions that must be prioritized in the recovery process and develop effective recovery strategies that minimize the impact of a disruption on the business.

Based on the results of your business impact analysis (BIA) and risk assessment we identified, you will then use that information to outline detailed procedures for responding to disasters and disruptions. These procedures are designed to minimize the impact of the disruption and to help your organization quickly recover and resume normal operations. Here are some crucial areas of your plan development you need to consider.

This area should outline the procedures for responding to an emergency or disaster such as activating emergency protocols, evacuation procedures, and securing the facility. This plan should also identify the roles, responsibilities, and contact information of your crisis management team. The team should be trained in crisis communication and have access to the necessary tools and resources to effectively communicate during a crisis.

This area should outline the procedures for recovering critical IT systems, infrastructure, and data following a disaster or disruption. Your plan should include recovery time objectives (RTOs) for critical systems and data, and identify the resources and personnel needed to carry out the recovery process.

This component of your BCP outlines how an organization will communicate with employees, customers, vendors, and other stakeholders during and after an emergency or disruption. A well-designed communication plan can help ensure that stakeholders receive timely and accurate information, maintain confidence in the organization’s ability to respond to the crisis and reduce the impact of the disruption.

Testing your business continuity plan is essential to ensure its effectiveness in protecting your business in the event of a disaster or disruption. Furthermore, it is important to conduct regular testing to identify areas for improvement and to keep your plan current.

A few key steps to follow when testing your plan include:

• Establish testing objectives
• Define testing scenarios
• Choose testing methods
• Conduct your tests
• Review the results

By testing your BCP, you can identify gaps in your plan and make necessary improvements to ensure that your business is prepared to respond to a range of potential disasters and disruptions.

Train your employees on the organization’s BCP to ensure that everyone knows their roles and responsibilities in the event of a disaster or disruption. Here are some suggested steps to follow when training your employees:

• Develop a training plan
• Create training materials
• Schedule training sessions
• Encourage questions and feedback
• Reinforce training regularly

By training your employees on your BCP, you can ensure that everyone is prepared to respond to a range of potential disasters and disruptions, and that your business is able to recover quickly and effectively in the event of a crisis.

Finally, maintain your plan by reviewing and updating it regularly. Evaluate the effectiveness of your plan based on any past incidents or tests that you have conducted. Identify any areas where the plan may need to be revised or updated.

Review and update the procedures outlined in your plan to ensure that they are accurate and effective. This might include updating contact information, revising recovery time objectives, or identifying new resources. Train employees on any changes to the plan and their roles and responsibilities in responding to a disaster or disruption.

By regularly reviewing and updating your business continuity and disaster recovery plan, you can ensure that it remains effective in protecting your business in the event of a disaster or disruption, and that your team is prepared to respond quickly and effectively.

An organization without a business continuity plan is one disruption away from permanently shutting down. Do not put your BCP on the back burner. Protect your organization by having the proper systems in place to prevent a disaster happening to you.

If you need assistance with developing a business continuity plan for your organization, contact thirtyone3 technology at 623.850.5392 or by email at inquiries@thirtyone3technology.com.