The concept of business continuity continues to be attracting growing attention recently. It’s an essential risk management function for just about any company. Many regulatory and standards physiques require proof of business continuity planning in their approval or certification processes. However, there can often be confusion in regards to what exactly it’s. Business continuity (BC) is totally different from disaster recovery. Although carefully related, disaster recovery (DR) is much more dependent on restoring the functioning of computers along with other hardware within the situation of the adverse event. Business continuity, however, includes a far wider remit.
First of all, BC views all parts of the industry as opposed to just we’ve got the technology. For instance, a tragedy recovery plan will specify the way a computer will be restored with a systems administrator after major flooding. A company continuity plan (BCP) goes further, by analyzing how that key worker will visit work given transport disruptions, and how to speak news with other employees in your own home. A BCP is driven not by technological factors, but with a Business Impact Analysis (BIA), which identifies which business processes are central towards the functioning from the business. These core processes may involve computers, however they might equally well involve people, procedures, documents or any other equipment. What counts like a “core” business process will change for each organisation. Typically, it offers profit-making functions for example sales of stock or handover of deliverables, and excludes “back-office” or internal functions for example filing of tax statements or interviewing of job candidates, which may be postponed for a short period without major hindrance towards the business.
Next, BC involves not just major disasters (for example fire, epidemics, or terrorist activity), but additionally lesser interruptions like a power cut, trojan or even the illness of the key employee. Although these interruptions may be technically simple to get over, they’ve already a substantial business impact, particularly if they modify the sales function to have an longer timeframe. Therefore, the priority for planning and repair is going to be driven by business impact as opposed to the easy technical repair.
Thirdly, and more importantly, BC is all about way over just reacting to occasions. It’s also pro-active, planning the ways that adverse occasions could be prevented altogether to ensure that disaster recovery isn’t actually needed. This is actually the ideal situation, but might not be simple to achieve!
