Why is a business continuity plan important
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Why have a business continuity plan
Your fixed costs will continue after an event, whether or not you are open for business. With so much at stake, your company cannot afford to not have a ception #4: "business continuity and disaster recovery planning are the same. Continuity is a proactive plan to avoid and mitigate risks associated with a disruption of operations. It details steps to be taken before, during and after an event to maintain the financial viability of an er recovery is a reactive plan for responding after an event. It deals with the safety and restoration of critical personnel, locations, and operational procedures after a disaster, and is a part of business continuity hurricane sandy and 9/11 to the tornadoes in oklahoma, companies that proactively consider how to respond to events are the first to get back to business, often at the expense of competitors. A predefined business continuity plan combined with the proper insurance coverage, maximizes the chance of a successful recovery by eliminating hasty decision-making under stressful conditions. It details how to get businesses back on track after a disruption – in the most thoughtful way your business can withstand a disaster? Travelers study found that 48% of small businesses are operating without any type of business continuity plan, yet 95 percent indicated they felt they were your business continuity plan predominately an insurance policy? You answered "yes" to any of these questions, then your business continuity plan may be giving you a false sense of l disasters becoming more common — and 2012, nine of the top 10 most expensive world-wide natural disasters happened in the united states. Continuity planning for a competitive alarming 48% of business owners surveyed by travelers in 2012 said they have no plan in place.
Importance of business continuity plan
That means business continuity planning is more than smart business — it helps your company remain better positioned to recover from the business interruption, property damage, financial impact, and loss of life that a natural disaster or man-made event may your business continuity ng for a disruption or catastrophic event should happen when business is going well, not when disaster strikes. Having a pre-defined, well-documented business continuity plan that clearly communicates how your business will respond during an event can help mitigate risk — and is one of the best investments your company can a continuity plan in four stepsbusiness continuity planning can help protect you from long term the d linksbusiness continuity planning in 4 stepslearn how to identify threats to your businessemployee communication & to an agentfind an agent near you to discuss your specific coverage for our customersfor more information, visit the business continuity library on our customer our ss continuitysee all business continuity content >. Continuity planning: why it’s > business continuity planning: why it’s ss disasters come in all shapes and sizes. Business owners should take steps now to give themselves a better chance to reopen quickly. Without a business continuity plan, one in four businesses forced to shut down because of a disaster never excuses into sses have lots of excuses for not having a business continuity plan, including the most common “we thought it would never happen to us. The following are common misperceptions about business continuity planning:Creating a plan takes too much ng a plan takes too much thought we had no had more important things to think thought our internet technology was thought we could deal with a crisis when it thought we were too small to need a couldn’t find the right already backed up our data and thought that was the same as business didn’t know where to go for any of these sound familiar, it’s time to stop making excuses and start making plans. While there are quite a number of business continuity solutions available, a good place to start is with the free, easy-to-use ofb-ez toolkit created by the insurance institute for business & home safety (ibhs). Ofb-ez takes business owners step-by-step through the planning process in order to create a plan that helps them to:Focus on the risks that are most likely to disrupt their business fy critical fy the activities that are essential for staying in business and recovering an easy-to-use recovery plan tailored to specific your key customers, contacts, suppliers and of why continuity planning is are many good reasons for businesses to plan for the unexpected, most importantly protection and preserving the bottom line. To keep it simple, remember the abcs:Avoid market share a business continuity plan, your business will have a better chance of remaining competitive and minimizing the loss of revenue and customers. When your customers know you have plans in place to provide continued delivery of goods and services during a crisis, they are less likely to flee to competitors if a disaster threatens your a plan allows you to demonstrate that your business is committed and prepared to protect your employees, clients and their assets at all times.
This demonstrates a proactive attitude and can enhance employee morale and public opinion about your business. With increased confidence in your business’ ability to operate during unexpected circumstances, your positive reputation grows with customers, staff, partners and a business continuity plan will improve communication within your organization and with customers, suppliers, vendors, and key stakeholders. This is a helpful way to improve daily operations, not only in the event of elements of a business continuity –ez translates professional business continuity concepts into common business language, through a streamlined eight step process. Here’s how businesses can make it happen:Know your suppliers, vendors, key customers, and key your information when to update and test your where to go for ss continuity planning is vital to survival and should not be put off indefinitely as you focus on today’s challenges. It’s important to devote enough time and attention to planning for the future, even when that future may involve events that are unpleasant to think about and, hopefully, not likely to happen. Open for business recognizes this and is designed to help you gather information, improve communication, and develop operational contingencies that will be useful today as well as tomorrow. Ibhs’ business continuity webpage to download the free business continuity tool and begin your planning process ss continuity planning is vital to survival and should not be put off indefinitely as you focus on today’s challenges. Guide to business continuity publication provides a summary and general guidelines for business continuity planning (bcp). Although they differ in goals and functions, bcp can be applied by all s in the world of business continuity ng a business continuity to do when a disruption s in the world of business continuity ss continuity planning versus business resumption planning and disaster recovery planning. A disaster recovery plan deals with recovering information technology (it) assets after a disastrous interruption.
Both imply a stoppage in critical operations and are izing that some services or products must be continuously delivered without interruption, there has been a shift from business resumption planning to business continuity planning. Instead of focusing on resuming a business after critical operations have ceased, or recovering after a disaster, a business continuity plan endeavors to ensure that critical operations continue to be effects of september 11, ber 11, 2001 demonstrated that although high impact, low probability events could occur, recovery is possible. Even though buildings were destroyed and blocks of manhattan were affected, businesses and institutions with good continuity plans lessons learned include:Plans must be updated and tested frequently;. Shortcomings, business continuity plans in place pre september 11 were indispensable to the continuity effort; sed uncertainty (following a high impact disruption such as terrorism) may lengthen time until operations are uous service delivery assurance (csda) is a commitment to continuous delivery of critical services that avoids immediate severe disruption to an organization. A bcp includes both risk evaluation, management and control and effective plans, measures and arrangements for business uous risk management lowers the risk of disruption and assesses the potential impacts of disruptions when they occur. An example would be the business impact analysis component of a bcp is business continuity planning? Business continuity planning is a proactive planning process that ensures critical services or products are delivered during a disruption. Business continuity plan includes:Plans, measures and arrangements to ensure the continuous delivery of critical services and products, which permits the organization to recover its facility, data and fication of necessary resources to support business continuity, including personnel, information, equipment, financial allocations, legal counsel, infrastructure protection and a bcp enhances an organization's image with employees, shareholders and customers by demonstrating a proactive attitude. Additional benefits include improvement in overall organizational efficiency and identifying the relationship of assets and human and financial resources to critical services and is business continuity planning organization is at risk from potential disasters that include:Natural disasters such as tornadoes, floods, blizzards, earthquakes and and energy ications, transportation, safety and service sector nmental disasters such as pollution and hazardous materials attacks and hacker ng and maintaining a bcp helps ensure that an institution has the resources and information needed to deal with these ng a business continuity plan. Bcp contains a governance structure often in the form of a committee that will ensure senior management commitments and define senior management roles and bcp senior management committee is responsible for the oversight, initiation, planning, approval, testing and audit of the bcp.
It also implements the bcp, coordinates activities, approves the bia survey, oversees the creation of continuity plans and reviews the results of quality assurance managers or a bcp committee would normally:Approve the governance structure;. The creation of a list of appropriate committees, working groups and teams to develop and execute the plan;. Quality assurance activities; e conflicting interests and bcp committee is normally comprised of the following members:Executive sponsor has overall responsibility for the bcp committee; elicits senior management's support and direction; and ensures that adequate funding is available for the bcp coordinator secures senior management's support; estimates funding requirements; develops bcp policy; coordinates and oversees the bia process; ensures effective participant input; coordinates and oversees the development of plans and arrangements for business continuity; establishes working groups and teams and defines their responsibilities; coordinates appropriate training; and provides for regular review, testing and audit of the ty officer works with the coordinator to ensure that all aspects of the bcp meet the security requirements of the information officer (cio) cooperates closely with the bcp coordinator and it specialists to plan for effective and harmonized ss unit representatives provide input, and assist in performing and analyzing the results of the business impact bcp committee is commonly co-chaired by the executive sponsor and the ss impact purpose of the bia is to identify the organization's mandate and critical services or products; rank the order of priority of services or products for continuous delivery or rapid recovery; and identify internal and external impacts of fy the mandate and critical aspects of an step determines what goods or services it must be delivered. To determine the ranking of critical services, information is required to determine impact of a disruption to service delivery, loss of revenue, additional expenses and intangible fy impacts of impact of a disruption to a critical service or business product determines how long the organization could function without the service or product, and how long clients would accept its unavailability. Additional a business function or process is inoperable, how long would it take before additional expenses would start to add up? Loss of image or reputation is especially important for public institutions as they are often perceived as having higher nce few organizations can afford to pay the full costs of a recovery; having insurance ensures that recovery is fully or partially considering insurance options, decide what threats to cover. It is important to use the bia to help decide both what needs insurance coverage, and the corresponding level of coverage. Coverage for such eventualities is available as an extension in the submitting a claim, or talking to an adjustor, clear communication and understanding is important. The burden of proof when making claims lies with the policyholder and requires valid and accurate e an expert or an insurance team when developing the response all relevant information has been collected and assembled, rankings for the critical business services or products can be produced. Minimum service levels and maximum allowable downtimes are then fy is important to identify the internal and external dependencies of critical services or products, since service delivery relies on those al dependencies include employee availability, corporate assets such as equipment, facilities, computer applications, data, tools, vehicles, and support services such as finance, human resources, security and information technology al dependencies include suppliers, any external corporate assets such as equipment, facilities, computer applications, data, tools, vehicles, and any external support services such as facility management, utilities, communications, transportation, finance institutions, insurance providers, government services, legal services, and health and safety for business step consists of the preparation of detailed response/recovery plans and arrangements to ensure continuity.
These plans and arrangements detail the ways and means to ensure critical services and products are delivered at a minimum service levels within tolerable down times. Continuity plans should be made for each critical service or ting threats and s and risks are identified in the bia or in a full-threat-and-risk assessment. Include them in the bcp if they are continuity for the continuity of services and products are based on the results of the bia. Ensure that plans are made for increasing levels of severity of impact from a disruption. If the flooding is severe, the relocation of critical parts of the business to another area until flooding subsides may be the best r example would be a company that uses paper forms to keep track of inventory until computers or servers are repaired, or electrical service is restored. For other institutions, such as large financial firms, any computer disruptions may be unacceptable, and an alternate site and data replication technology must be risks and benefits of each possible option for the plan should be considered, keeping cost, flexibility and probable disruption scenarios in mind. Hardened sites may have alternate power supplies; back-up generation capability; high levels of physical security; and protection from electronic surveillance or ss continuity plans can be smoothly and effectively implemented by:Having all employees and staff briefed on the contents of the bcp and aware of their individual employees with direct responsibilities trained for tasks they will be required to perform, and be aware of other teams' training, exercises should be developed and scheduled in order to achieve and maintain high levels of competence and readiness. While exercises are time and resource consuming, they are the best method for validating a plan. The following items should be incorporated when planning an exercise:The part of the bcp to be anticipated results. It is important to include factors such as time, location, method of discovery and sequence of events, whether events are finished or still in progress, initial damage reports and any external ications for ed realism can be achieved by giving participants access to emergency contact personnel who share in the exercise.
Participant feedback should also be incorporated in the exercise se complexity level can also be enhanced by focusing the exercise on one part of the bcp instead of involving the entire y assurance of the bcp should assess the plan's accuracy, relevance and effectiveness. Substantive changes to the organization take place; an exercise to incorporate auditing the bcp, consultants nominally verify:Procedures used to determine critical services and ology, accuracy, and comprehensiveness of continuity to do when a disruption tions are handled in three steps:Continuation of critical ry and nt response involves the deployment of teams, plans, measures and arrangements. Communications management requirements may necessitate building redundancies into communications systems and creating a communications plan to adequately address all ions emergency operations center (eoc) can be used to manage operations in the event of a disruption. Recovery and restoration includes:Re-deploying ng whether to repair the facility, relocate to an alternate site or build a new ing the additional resources necessary for restoring business -establishing normal ng operations at pre-disruption critical services and products cannot be delivered, consequences can be severe. A business continuity plan is a tool that allows institutions to not only to moderate risk, but also continuously deliver products and services despite cial/territorial emergency management organizations (emos). D82-37/er of public works and government ss continuity importance of business continuity planning is something that almost every organization has been forced to deal with due to recent events. However, before hastily implementing continuity plans, we must implement more than just a "catch all" response to ability of an organization to recover from a disaster is directly related to the degree of bcp [business continuity planning] that has taken place before the disaster. Industry analysts claim that two out of five businesses that experience a disaster will go out of business within five years of the ss continuity plans are critical to the transparent and continuous operation of all types of businesses. More importantly, these strategies are assuming increased importance as companies become increasingly reliant on technology to do business. As companies place more emphasis on it and communications services - to support their customer communications and transactions, or to help manage supply chains - they become less tolerant of information and service loss as a consequence of companies now realize that it is not sufficient to implement a generic, "one size fits all" business continuity plan.
For an effective response, with respect to maintaining operational continuity, it must be customized to specific risks and catastrophic scenarios which could range from major building loss to local system zations must plan for the recovery of key business functions, using priorities and timescales derived from assessed risks and accompanying data. Business continuity plans must cover perquisites for it, data and voice communications as well as for essential personnel and offsite locations. In today's world, it is no longer sufficient for an organization to recover its technology and communications infrastructure; it must have people available and accommodations in which they can current economic climate, as well as the elevated awareness of threats that include hackers, cyber-terrorists, natural and unnatural disasters, have all played their part in bringing business continuity planning to the top of ceo and cto concerns. It can then identify its critical business processes, and organize priorities and timescales for uently, the company identifies its preferred options for achieving organizational recovery in the event of each different type of failure. This involves compiling data on all possible scenarios and then using it to simulate adverse effects on the organization's people, processes, it and communications services and the basis of a mutually agreed upon strategy, a focused, "organization-specific" disaster recovery plan is then developed that encompasses the organization's overall strategy, business recovery concerns, and a detailed action plan and related responsibilities for various disaster l disasters are not the only threats to your business operations. To achieve this, companies can deploy various information management solutions which automate many manual network management e the attention given to business continuity planning following recent terrorist activities, companies are still failing to put strategic contingency plans in place. Analyst firm gartner, for example, estimates that only 35% have a comprehensive disaster recovery plan in place and fewer than 10% have crisis management, contingency, business recovery and business resumption is an alarming statistic, considering the high cost of not successfully "expecting the unexpected". At worst you could go out of business without a second 's the worst that could happen? Is it more important to have your website up and running, or your phone system connected? S disaster recovery solutions, real-time data protection, business continuity planning and offsite data storage solutions: " no recovery strategy = no data " ™.
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