Business Continuity

Business continuity planning (BCP) is the process of creating systems of prevention and recovery to deal with potential threats to a company, ensuring critical functions can continue during and after a disaster.

Business continuity planning ensures that critical business functions can continue during and after a significant disruption. It encompasses both the planning process and the documented plan.

Key BCP components: - Business Impact Analysis (BIA): Identify critical processes and dependencies - Recovery Time Objective (RTO): Maximum acceptable downtime - Recovery Point Objective (RPO): Maximum acceptable data loss - Continuity Strategies: How to maintain operations during disruption - Recovery Procedures: Steps to restore normal operations

BCP vs DR: - Business Continuity: Maintaining business operations during disruption - Disaster Recovery: Recovering IT systems after a disaster

A comprehensive BCP addresses: - Natural disasters (floods, earthquakes) - Technical failures (power outages, hardware failures) - Human-caused events (cyber attacks, strikes) - Pandemics and health emergencies

Plans must be tested regularly (at least annually) through tabletop exercises, simulations, or full tests.

Why It Matters

Organizations without tested business continuity plans experience 2.5x longer recovery times and significantly higher financial losses during disruptions. From ransomware attacks to cloud provider outages, disruptions are inevitable. A documented BCP with defined RTOs, RPOs, and regularly tested recovery procedures ensures your organization can maintain critical operations and meet customer SLAs even during major incidents.

Key Points

Required by ISO 22301 and addressed by most frameworks

RTO and RPO are critical metrics to define

Must include Business Impact Analysis

Plans should be tested at least annually

Different from but related to Disaster Recovery

Applicable Compliance Frameworks

SOC 2 ISO 27001 HIPAA NIST CSF

Related Terms

Disaster Recovery

Disaster recovery (DR) is a set of policies, tools, and procedures designed to enable the recovery or continuation of IT infrastructure and systems following a disaster.

Risk Assessment

A risk assessment is a systematic process of identifying, analyzing, and evaluating potential threats to an organization's information assets.

Incident Response

Incident response is a structured approach to preparing for, detecting, containing, and recovering from security incidents while minimizing damage.