Does your Business Continuity Plan Cover These Aspects

Business continuity planning (BCP) is an essential part of risk management. It outlines a broad range of disaster scenarios and the steps that a business should take to return to its regular trade process. A continuity plan must be written ahead of time with the inputs of key staff and stakeholders. With the help of BCP, minimization of harm to business during adverse scenarios is possible. Stats from Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) suggests that more than 40 percent of businesses never reopen after a disaster, and those who do, only 29 percent can restore their businesses completely.

In November 2016, a computer virus infected a network of hospitals in the United Kingdom. Due to the virus, three major hospitals were paralyzed for five days. Disaster scenarios like this in healthcare facilities may lead to severe problems or even death. If the hospitals optimized business continuity plan, scenarios like this could have been avoided.

The International Standard Organization published an international standard (ISO 22301: 2012, societal security) that addresses the issues on business continuity planning for both small-scale and large-scale organizations. The ISO 22301 standard provides a framework to establish, operate, monitor, and maintain continuity plans.

The following are the seven aspects that a business continuity plan should cover:

1. Business Impact Analysis (BIA)

The overall concept of business continuity relies on identifying business functions in the organization and assigning a degree of importance to each function. BIA is the primary tool for gathering and assigning this information. It can define the effect of disruption on functional and operational activities of the enterprise. The primary purpose of BIA is to: