what is an business continuity plan

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What is a business continuity plan (bcp), and how does it work.

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What Is a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)?

A business continuity plan (BCP) is a system of prevention and recovery from potential threats to a company. The plan ensures that personnel and assets are protected and are able to function quickly in the event of a disaster.

Key Takeaways

Business continuity plans (BCPs) are prevention and recovery systems for potential threats, such as natural disasters or cyber-attacks.
BCP is designed to protect personnel and assets and make sure they can function quickly when disaster strikes.
BCPs should be tested to ensure there are no weaknesses, which can be identified and corrected.

Understanding Business Continuity Plans (BCPs)

BCP involves defining any and all risks that can affect the company's operations, making it an important part of the organization's risk management strategy. Risks may include natural disasters—fire, flood, or weather-related events—and cyber-attacks . Once the risks are identified, the plan should also include:

Determining how those risks will affect operations
Implementing safeguards and procedures to mitigate the risks
Testing procedures to ensure they work
Reviewing the process to make sure that it is up to date

BCPs are an important part of any business. Threats and disruptions mean a loss of revenue and higher costs, which leads to a drop in profitability. And businesses can't rely on insurance alone because it doesn't cover all the costs and the customers who move to the competition. It is generally conceived in advance and involves input from key stakeholders and personnel.

Business impact analysis, recovery, organization, and training are all steps corporations need to follow when creating a Business Continuity Plan.

Benefits of a Business Continuity Plan

Businesses are prone to a host of disasters that vary in degree from minor to catastrophic. Business continuity planning is typically meant to help a company continue operating in the event of major disasters such as fires. BCPs are different from a disaster recovery plan, which focuses on the recovery of a company's information technology system after a crisis.

Consider a finance company based in a major city. It may put a BCP in place by taking steps including backing up its computer and client files offsite. If something were to happen to the company's corporate office, its satellite offices would still have access to important information.

An important point to note is that BCP may not be as effective if a large portion of the population is affected, as in the case of a disease outbreak. Nonetheless, BCPs can improve risk management—preventing disruptions from spreading. They can also help mitigate downtime of networks or technology, saving the company money.

How To Create a Business Continuity Plan

There are several steps many companies must follow to develop a solid BCP. They include:

Business Impact Analysis : Here, the business will identify functions and related resources that are time-sensitive. (More on this below.)
Recovery : In this portion, the business must identify and implement steps to recover critical business functions.
Organization : A continuity team must be created. This team will devise a plan to manage the disruption.
Training : The continuity team must be trained and tested. Members of the team should also complete exercises that go over the plan and strategies.

Companies may also find it useful to come up with a checklist that includes key details such as emergency contact information, a list of resources the continuity team may need, where backup data and other required information are housed or stored, and other important personnel.

Along with testing the continuity team, the company should also test the BCP itself. It should be tested several times to ensure it can be applied to many different risk scenarios . This will help identify any weaknesses in the plan which can then be corrected.

In order for a business continuity plan to be successful, all employees—even those who aren't on the continuity team—must be aware of the plan.

Business Continuity Impact Analysis

An important part of developing a BCP is a business continuity impact analysis. It identifies the effects of disruption of business functions and processes. It also uses the information to make decisions about recovery priorities and strategies.

FEMA provides an operational and financial impact worksheet to help run a business continuity analysis. The worksheet should be completed by business function and process managers who are well acquainted with the business. These worksheets will summarize the following:

The impacts—both financial and operational—that stem from the loss of individual business functions and process
Identifying when the loss of a function or process would result in the identified business impacts

Completing the analysis can help companies identify and prioritize the processes that have the most impact on the business's financial and operational functions. The point at which they must be recovered is generally known as the “recovery time objective.”

Business Continuity Plan vs. Disaster Recovery Plan

BCPs and disaster recovery plans are similar in nature, the latter focuses on technology and information technology (IT) infrastructure. BCPs are more encompassing—focusing on the entire organization, such as customer service and supply chain.

BCPs focus on reducing overall costs or losses, while disaster recovery plans look only at technology downtimes and related costs. Disaster recovery plans tend to involve only IT personnel—which create and manage the policy. However, BCPs tend to have more personnel trained on the potential processes.

Why Is Business Continuity Plan (BCP) Important?

Businesses are prone to a host of disasters that vary in degree from minor to catastrophic and business continuity plans (BCPs) are an important part of any business. BCP is typically meant to help a company continue operating in the event of threats and disruptions. This could result in a loss of revenue and higher costs, which leads to a drop in profitability. And businesses can't rely on insurance alone because it doesn't cover all the costs and the customers who move to the competition.

What Should a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) Include?

Business continuity plans involve identifying any and all risks that can affect the company's operations. The plan should also determine how those risks will affect operations and implement safeguards and procedures to mitigate the risks. There should also be testing procedures to ensure these safeguards and procedures work. Finally, there should be a review process to make sure that the plan is up to date.

What Is Business Continuity Impact Analysis?

An important part of developing a BCP is a business continuity impact analysis which identifies the effects of disruption of business functions and processes. It also uses the information to make decisions about recovery priorities and strategies.

FEMA provides an operational and financial impact worksheet to help run a business continuity analysis.

These worksheets summarize the impacts—both financial and operational—that stem from the loss of individual business functions and processes. They also identify when the loss of a function or process would result in the identified business impacts.

Business continuity plans (BCPs) are created to help speed up the recovery of an organization filling a threat or disaster. The plan puts in place mechanisms and functions to allow personnel and assets to minimize company downtime. BCPs cover all organizational risks should a disaster happen, such as flood or fire.

Federal Emergency Management Agency. " Business Process Analysis and Business Impact Analysis User Guide ." Pages 15 - 17.

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What Is A Business Continuity Plan? [+ Template & Examples]

Published: December 30, 2022

When a business crisis occurs, the last thing you want to do is panic.

executives discussing business continuity plan

The second-to-last thing you want to do is be unprepared. Crises typically arise without warning. While you shouldn't start every day expecting the worst, you should be relatively prepared for anything to happen.

A business crisis can cost your company a lot of money and ruin your reputation if you don't have a business continuity plan in place. Customers aren't very forgiving, especially when a crisis is influenced by accidents within the company or other preventable mistakes. If you want your company to be able to maintain its business continuity in the face of a crisis, then you'll need to come up with this type of plan to uphold its essential functions.

In this post, we'll explain what a business continuity plan is, give examples of scenarios that would require a business continuity plan, and provide a template that you can use to create a well-rounded program for your business.

Table of Contents:

What is a business continuity plan?

Business Continuity Types
Business Continuity vs Disaster Recovery

Business Continuity Plan Template

How to write a business continuity plan.

Business Continuity Examples

A business continuity plan outlines directions and procedures that your company will follow when faced with a crisis. These plans include business procedures, names of assets and partners, human resource functions, and other helpful information that can help maintain your brand's relationships with relevant stakeholders. The goal of a business continuity plan is to handle anything from minor disruptions to full-blown threats.

For example, one crisis that your business may have to respond to is a severe snowstorm. Your team may be wondering, "If a snowstorm disrupted our supply chain, how would we resume business?" Planning contingencies ahead of time for situations like these can help your business stay afloat when you're faced with an unavoidable crisis.

When you think about business continuity in terms of the essential functions your business requires to operate, you can begin to mitigate and plan for specific risks within those functions.

Crisis Communication and Management Kit

Manage, plan for, and communicate during your corporate crises with these crisis management plan templates.

Free Crisis Management Plan Template
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Additional Crisis Best Management Practices

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Business Continuity Planning

Business continuity planning is the process of creating a plan to address a crisis. When writing out a business continuity plan, it's important to consider the variety of crises that could potentially affect the company and prepare a resolution for each.

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Business Continuity Simplified

By Andy Marker | December 17, 2018 (updated October 24, 2021)

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Unexpected work interruptions can cripple a business and cause millions of dollars in expenses and lost business. Learn about the importance of business continuity planning and management from experts.

In this article, you’ll learn the definition of a business continuity plan and the primary goal of business continuity planning . Additionally, you’ll learn the steps involved in business continuity planning and about the business continuity lifecycle .

What Is Business Continuity Management?

In business continuity management (BCM) , a company identifies potential threats to its activities and the threat impact. The company then develops plans to respond to those threats and continue activities through any crisis.

What Is a Business Continuity Plan?

A business continuity plan (BCP) describes how a business will continue to run during and after a crisis event. The BCP details guidelines, procedures, and work instructions to aid continuity.

To learn more about writing a plan, see our how-to guide to writing a business continuity plan .

What Is Business Continuity Planning?

Business continuity planning (BCP) refers to the work a company does to create a plan and system to deal with risks. Thorough planning seeks to prevent problems and ensure business processes continue during and after a crisis.

Business continuity planning ensures that the company deals with disruptions quickly, and minimizes the impact on operations. Business continuity planning is also called business resumption planning and continuous service delivery assurance (CSDA) .

What Is the Primary Goal of Business Continuity Planning?

The main goal of business continuity planning is to support key company activities during a crisis. Planning ensures a company can run with limited resources or restricted access to buildings. Continuity planning also aims to minimize revenue or reputation losses.

A business continuity plan should outline several key things that an organization needs to do to prepare for potential disruptions to its activities, including the following:

Recognize potential threats to a company.
Assess potential impacts on the company’s daily activities.
Provide a way to reduce these potential problems, and establish a structure that allows key company functions to continue throughout and after the event.
Identify the resources the organization needs to continue operating, such as staffing, equipment, and alternative locations.

Business Continuity Planning Steps

A business continuity plan includes guidelines and procedures to guide a business through disruption. The efforts to create a plan are the same for large or small organizations. A simple plan is better than no plan.

The basic steps for writing a business continuity plan are as follows:

Create a governance team.
Complete your business impact analysis (BIA) and risk assessment documents.
Document your plan. Remember to include detailed guidelines and procedures that cover key processes and facilities.
Test and update the plan regularly.

The Business Continuity Management Lifecycle

Business continuity management includes preparing for and handling unexpected events. BCM has a six-step lifecycle. This cycle repeats during both in regular business times and crises, as you take the right steps to keep activities always running.

The BCM lifecycle includes the following points:

Mitigate Risk: Proactively identify business continuity risks to your company, and plan how your company will respond.
Prepare: Train staff on your business continuity plan and ensure they understand what they need to do to help the business respond.
Respond: Ensure that your company and all employees respond appropriately to a crisis. Be prepared to adapt in the moment.
Resolve: Ensure that the company plans how to communicate effectively with staff and that it does so appropriately during the crisis.
Recover: Inform employees, customers, and other important people about the status of the crisis and your company’s response.
Resume: Communicate with employees and others after the crisis ends.

What Are Business Continuity Risks or Events?

Also called business continuity events, business continuity risks are the most common events that can disrupt a company’s regular operations — these can be natural and human-made crises. Defining these risks is a vital part of business continuity planning.

Such events might include the following:

Severe weather
Natural disasters (tornadoes, floods, blizzards, earthquakes, fire, etc.)
A physical security threat
A recall of a company’s product
Supply chain problems
Threats to staffing and employee safety
Accidents at an organization’s facilities
Destruction to a company’s facilities or property
Power disruptions
Server crashes
Failures in public and private services (communications, transportation, safety, etc.)
Environmental disasters, including hazardous materials spills
Network disruptions
Human error/human-made hazards
Stock market crashes
Cyber attacks and hacker activity

Any of these triggers can result in broader problems for a company, such as danger or injury to staff and others, equipment damages, brand injury, and loss of income and net worth. Business continuity management and planning address and mitigate these contingencies.

What Is a Business Continuity Strategy?

A business continuity strategy is more often called a business continuity plan. The strategy includes the processes and structure a company uses to manage an unexpected event.

Some people consider business continuity strategy to be a step in the planning process. In the strategy phase, business continuity planners describe the overall approach a company should take to prevent, manage, and recover from a crisis.

An Overview of Business Continuity Management and Planning

There are several goals, key elements, and benefits to business continuity management and planning. The primary goals of management and planning are as follows:

Build Company Resiliency: Doing so means that your company’s tools, buildings, and operations are resistant to — and not greatly affected by — most disruptions.
Create a Plan for Recovery (with Contingencies that Aid in That Recovery): If a major event does cause problems, you should have a plan for how to recover quickly. That plan will include contingencies. For example, you should plan for how key operations will resume if there is a widespread power outage.

Business continuity management and planning generally cover the following areas, with differences depending on the organization and industry:

Disaster Recovery: Disaster recovery involves recovering technology after a disruptive event. You can learn more about disaster recovery and download free templates in our comprehensive article .
Emergency Management: Emergency management focuses on avoiding and mitigating catastrophic risks to staff and communities.
Business Recovery: Considered part of business continuity, business recovery centers on short-term activities after a disruptive incident. The short-term is sometimes defined as less than 60 days.
Business Resumption: This describes the longterm phase of recovery (60 or more days after an even), wherein the company returns to near-normal conditions.
Crisis Management: Crisis management focuses on communicating with stakeholders during and after a crisis, and controlling damage during the event. To learn more, read our comprehensive guide to crisis management .
Incident Management: Incident management is an ITIL (previously known as Information Technology Infrastructure Library) framework for reducing or eliminating downtime after an incident.
Contingency Planning: This covers outlier risks that are unlikely to occur but which could have disastrous results.

“A well managed business continuity management program will help protect people, assets, and business processes,” says Scott Owens, founder and managing director of BluTinuity , a business continuity firm based in New Berlin, Wisconsin. “It may not be able to prevent all incidents. But it can reduce the likelihood of incidents, decrease response time, and lower the cost and impact of an incident.”

Key Elements of Business Continuity Management

All business continuity management programs should include a number of key elements, which serve to ensure that your plan is positioned for success and that you regularly update and improve it.

These important elements include the following:

Governance: This is the structure and team your business sets up to create and monitor the program.
Business Alignment: This section details how your company’s current business continuity management and planning processes compare to expert approaches and industry standards.
Continuity Strategy and Recovery Strategies: Include a detailed plan that assesses risks to your organization and how you can recover, should those risks become reality.
Plan Documentation: Provide details on the plan that everyone in your company can access. To get started, see our roundup of free business continuity plan templates .
Tactical Implementation: This section includes details on the specific ways your company plans to recover from certain types of incidents.
Training: In this section, detail how you will train your staff to understand the business continuity plan and their role in it.
Testing: Include real-world simulations of a crisis event, and test how your company and its employees respond and the effectiveness of your business continuity plans.
Maintenance: Make changes to the plan where necessary to increase its effectiveness.
Monitoring: This section details how you will continue to compare industry standards and expert advice to how your plan is working.

To learn about formal requirements for business continuity planning and management, see our comprehensive article on the ISO 22301 standard .

The Costs of Business Continuity Management

The costs to do an appropriate job of business continuity management can be significant. However, some reports say that the cost of unforeseen downtime may be as much as $2.5 billion a year for Fortune 1000 companies.

Kurt Engemann, Ph.D., is Director of the Center for Business Continuity and Risk Management at Iona College in New York, Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Business Continuity and Risk Management and author of Business Continuity and Risk Management: Essentials of Organizational Resilience . In the book, he says that costs for business continuity preparation do not only include the groundwork to assess a company’s risks and plans to manage those risks. Rather, they also cover the needed backup facilities and equipment and company assets for emergency response. In addition, costs must cover resources for training employees and testing the plan.

Some experts have estimated that business continuity management and planning within only the crucial information technology aspects of companies can cost two to four percent of the information technology budget. But the costs are necessary, and worth it in the long run, according to business continuity experts.

“There is an initial outlay of a modest amount of money that will lessen the financial impact of a possible future crisis,” Engemann writes in his book. “Similar to an insurance policy, the financial benefit of BCM must be viewed from a long-term prospective.”

When an organization’s top executives complain about the costs, Owens says, “Ask them what it would cost their organization for an hour of downtime. Or eight hours. Or 24 hours. Chances are the cost — financial, operational, and to brand and reputation — of having key business functions unavailable for an extended period are significant. They will most likely find business continuity management to be worth the investment.”

Benefits of Business Continuity Management

Like Engemann, Owens points out that there are significant benefits to the investment organizations make in business continuity management, including the following:

Mission Critical Processes: If you understand your key processes, you can plan to protect them and prioritize their recovery.
Legal and Regulatory Compliance: Laws or regulations require companies in some industries to implement a formal business continuity management system.
Satisfying Demands from Other Organizations: Some groups and companies may require that your company sets up BCM before they do business with you.
Insurance Payments: To get the maximum payments from an insurance policy after an event, a company must have suitable business continuity management policies in place.
Reputation Management: Your business’s brand will be greatly helped or hurt, depending on how an unforeseen event affects its operations.
Competitive Advantage: A strong business continuity plan can offer your company the advantage over peers who are not as well prepared.
Seamless Recovery: Cloud-based technologies make data backup, remote work, and business recovery affordable and accessible. Groups and businesses of all sizes can benefit from such tools. See our article on cloud computing for business continuity to learn more.
Time Savings: Planning prevents teams from scrambling at the last minute to cobble together a recovery effort. Strong planning helps you get back online — and back on track — faster.

Michael Herrera, CEO of MHA Consulting , a business continuity and disaster recovery firm, cites two other significant benefits:

Keeping Customers and Avoiding Major Financial Losses: Getting operations back to normal quickly after an event means your company loses less money.

“Your customers aren’t as patient as you think they are,” Herrera explains. “They expect you to have a business continuity system and they expect you to be up and running. Their patience does run out.”

Improving Day-to-Day Operations: Herrera says his firm’s clients often discover how business continuity planning gives them insights into the day-to-day operations of their company. “It really can help you with process improvement and getting a good understanding of what your business does every day.”

Additionally, strong business continuity planning will enable you to do the following:

Officially declare a disaster and alert senior management.
Assist in the development of an official public statement regarding a disaster and its effects on a business.
Monitor your business’s progress and present the recovery status.
Provide ongoing support and guidance to teams with pre-planned operations.
Review critical processing, schedules, and backlogs to keep everyone up to date on status.
Ensure businesses have both the resources and the information to deal with an unforeseen emergency.
Reduce the risk that an emergency might pose to employees, clients, and vendors, etc.
Provide a response for both man-made and environmental disasters.
Improve overall business communication and response plans.
Summarize both the operational and the financial impacts resulting from the loss of critical business functions.
Allow businesses to plan for a loss of function that has potentially larger, more severe consequences.

See our article on the importance and benefits of business continuity planning to read more expert examples of how business continuity can bolster your company.

Key Business Continuity Management and Planning Considerations

Companies don’t have to face business continuity planning alone. There are a variety of tools and services that can help, including the following:

Consultant Services

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of consultants and companies that can provide help with developing your business continuity plan. Below are a few things to think about in choosing one:

How experienced are they? How long have they been around?
What’s their reputation as a company? What do their clients say about them?
Are they focused on a specific industry or area of business continuity, or do they have experience with a range of industries and a broad spectrum of business continuity?
How do they think about business continuity (as a somewhat separate practice or something that needs to be ingrained within your organization)?
How aligned is their advice with standards in your industry?

Business Continuity Software

There are also hundreds of pieces of business continuity software on the market. Here are some things to consider:

Are you looking for software that will automate the development of plan components, or software that offers more in-depth help during the planning phase?
What is the history of the software and the company behind it? How long has this particular software been on the market and what is the history and the reputation of the company behind it?
Is the software being continually updated and improved?

Below are some specifics to consider as you test drive the software:

Does it have an easy-to-use interface?
Does it cover all aspects and components of business continuity, including business impact analysis and risk assessment ?
Does it include sufficient storage for your company’s supporting documents?
Does it provide secure portable access via mobile or other technologies, if a crisis interrupts your information technology systems?
Does it provide strong data analytics?
Is it secure and private?

Primary Things Your Organization’s Business Continuity Management System Should Accomplish

While your business continuity management system will have various elements and details, there are some primary things it should do for your organization. They correspond to the key elements listed earlier in this article.

For example, a BCM system should help do the following:

Understand your company’s needs for business continuity and disaster preparedness. A BCM system should be able to assist company leaders in understanding the need for a business continuity management policy.
Understand which processes should be recovered and in what order.
Establish business continuity metrics to gauge success.
Plan for communicating with customers, staff, and other stakeholders.
Determine what tools, technology, and staffing are required to restore activities and support customers.
Establish remote-work support or relocation plans for staff and activities.
Implement ways to continually assess and manage continuity risks.
Monitor and review how its business continuity management system is working.
Continually improve the system.
Respond effectively in a real-world crisis, and allow the business’s critical operations to continue and all operations to resume quickly.

Although nobody wants to think about disasters or the effort needed to prepare to meet and mitigate crises, the alternative is the potential loss of reputation, income, or the entire business. In sum, planning translates to determining your key processes, equipment, and tools, and applying basic recovery strategies.

The Importance of Senior Organizational Leaders Strongly Supporting Your Business Continuity Management and Planning

Your senior leaders must strongly support your company’s business continuity management plan for it to succeed. Such leadership is key as storms, floods, pandemics, and data breaches increase in force and frequency.

“Make sure senior management is committed to the planning, development, execution, and implementation of a business continuity/disaster recovery program,” says Paul Kirvan , a business continuity consultant and a fellow of the Business Continuity Institute with 25 years of experience in business continuity work. “Otherwise, it simply won’t happen. Such programs work best if they have top-down support and funding, as opposed to being developed from the ground up.”

Business Continuity Plan Test Types

Testing verifies the effectiveness of your plan and provides training for participants. To ensure better communication, include suppliers, vendors, and other stakeholders in exercises. If appropriate, also consider including local emergency preparedness officials.

There are four types of testing, and each requires increasing levels of planning, resources, and focus. You should try to run each type of drill regularly.

Plan Review: Plan reviews are often the first test applied to a new plan. In this test, top management and some key BCP personnel review the relevance and completeness of a plan. Such a review can verify risk and BIA results, and help you check for gaps and inconsistencies among continuity documents.
Tabletop or Structured Walkthrough: A tabletop test requires more preparation and time. It provides a role-playing exercise for recovery teams.
Simulation or Walkthrough Drill: In a walkthrough drill, your continuity team physically completes the type of tasks they'd find in a crisis. They may practice evacuating a building during a fire, restoring a backup, or switching to another communication frequency.
Functional or Live Scenario: Functional tests include a complete physical drill of continuity plans. Live tests may focus on one aspect of the plan or include the complete plan. They may include one part of the company or all team members.

Be sure to document what happened in the test so everyone involved in the exercise — and especially those who created the plan — can understand what did and didn’t go well, and can revise as necessary.

Business Continuity Management Policy Statement

A business continuity policy statement is a written document that outlines an organization’s business continuity management program. The policy statement should be communicated to all employees and should be signed and endorsed by the organization’s senior management.

See real-world examples of a business continuity policy statement .

Cultivating Awareness of Business Continuity Plans

The best business continuity system is useless if no one knows about it. Find ways to promote your plans in daily company activities, and discuss business continuity regularly in company and team meetings. Also, be sure to include the business continuity manager in cross-functional planning meetings so they can represent the business continuity perspective. Above all, exercise your plan, test your plan, and then test again.

What Is the Importance of a Business Continuity Plan?

A business continuity plan is vital to ensure that your company mitigates downtime during a crisis. Resuming activities quickly after an event also helps ensure your company’s financial health.

How to Write a Business Continuity Plan

It is crucial that your company set up a group of people to help create your business continuity plan. The group should include senior leadership, experts, and staff. A simple, practical plan is the best plan. At a minimum, include continuity team roles and duties, and team member contact information. You should also add guidelines and checklists for dealing with unforeseen events.

Daily business functions rely on many resources — human, utilities, machines, and even paper, pens, and pencils. Business recovery after a disruptive event is no different. See our in-depth article on writing a business continuity plan for a complete list of resource types you may want to include in a plan.

You can ask certain questions as you form your strategy, and a business continuity plan usually includes common resources and elements. See our article on how to write a business continuity plan to learn more.

Business Continuity Plan Template

This template can help you document and track business operations in the event of a disruption/disaster to maintain critical processes. The plan includes space to record business function recovery priorities, recovery plans, and alternate site locations. Plan efficiently for disruption and minimize downtime, so your business maintains optimal efficiency.

Download Business Continuity Plan Template

Word | PowerPoint | PDF

You’ll find other most useful free, downloadable business continuity plan (BCP) templates, in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and PDF formats in this article .

What Is a Business Impact Analysis and Why Is It an Important Part of a Business Continuity Plan?

A business impact analysis (BIA) is one of the most important parts of business continuity planning. The analysis considers how an unforeseen disruption could affect a company. BIA results also suggest how a business can recover from a crisis.

The business impact analysis will include details on the following:

Recovery time objectives that outline the organization’s goals relating to how quickly various services and processes will resume after an event
Financial impact of an incident
Impact on customers
Other possible impacts of an incident
How the organization will prioritize recovery steps
How the organization will prioritize critical services or products
Identification of potential revenue loss
Identification of additional expenses the organization will incur because of the event
Identification of insurance an organization has or needs to have
Identification of an organization’s dependencies on other agencies, companies, and providers

See our business impact analysis toolkit to find guidelines and templates to get started.

Risk Mitigation for Business Continuity

Risk assessment is one of the first steps in preparing your business continuity plan.

Risk management includes identifying and ranking risks, and risk control includes identifying policies and procedures to avoid and contain risks.

To learn more about risk management , read our comprehensive guide.

The Importance of Periodically Testing an Organization’s Business Continuity Plan

Even the best business continuity plans are useless if you do not continually test them in real-world mockups. Testing helps you continuously improve procedures, and also keeps plans synched with current business context.

Robert Sollars, a security trainer and consultant from Mesa, Arizona, says, “You must exercise your plan and train your employees in it. This can be costly and unwieldy at times, but it is an absolute must. I liken this to buying a Lamborghini and letting it sit in the garage, never starting it up, never driving it, never doing anything but admiring it. Your plan must be taken out and test driven at least two to three times per year. If you don’t test it, then when the real thing pops you will realize what the books, consultants, and experts have told you is useless for your organization. Testing it allows you to figure out the bugs and tweak the necessary items to make it more efficient and effective.”

Owens adds, “If you haven’t tested your plans, you aren’t ready for a disaster.”

You can do some testing through simpler table top exercises — for example, by talking through hypothetical incidents with your team. But Owens and other business continuity experts say organizations should also periodically do exercises that more closely mimic a real-world event.

“Organizations need to move … to progressively more complex scenarios, involving cross-functional teams and interdependent systems and processes,” he writes in a blog post about business continuity. “This is the only way that a company can get outside its comfort zone to truly understand if what they have designed will really work. My preference is to involve role-playing, actors, and include participation from vendors, business partners, and local law enforcement when appropriate. This will almost always result in lessons learned and opportunities to improve the plan, which is another great outcome.”

The most important result from testing your plan is an understanding of where theoretical solutions won’t work in real events. This understanding will then allow your organization to amend the plan to be more effective.

What Is a Business Continuity Plan Governance Committee?

Many companies set up a business continuity plan governance committee, which consists of staff members and senior leaders (their continuity efforts is vital). Governance tasks include writing the business continuity plan and supervising ongoing plan maintenance.

The committee is often responsible for the following duties:

Approving the governance structure of the committee
Clarifying the roles of committee members and others working on the plan
Overseeing the creation of working groups to develop and implement the plan
Providing overall direction and communicate important information to employees
Approving the continuity plan and essential specifics within it
Setting priorities within the plan

The committee often includes the following members:

A senior leader from the business, often the sponsor
A business continuity manager and assistant manager
The company employee, or outside consultant, who will serve as overall coordinator of the business continuity plan
The company’s security officer
The company’s chief information officer, or information technology leader
Representatives from the company’s business department, to help with the business impact analysis
An administrative representative

How to Cultivate Resilience in Your Organization

A resilient organization has the tools and abilities to survive a disruptive event, and also regularly looks for new threats and adapts to changes in the organizational and industry landscape. Resilience experts recognize two types of resilience: reactive resilience uses a company’s existing processes to meet and overcome a crisis; proactive resilience anticipates disruptions and considers methods to prevent problems.

Real World Example: Lessons Learned About Business Continuity from the Terrorist Attacks of Sept. 11, 2001

Organizational leaders and business continuity experts learned a lot from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Worst of all, the attacks killed thousands of people. But they also severely disrupted communications, financial transactions, and some commerce in New York City and throughout the world.

The following are among the lessons learned:

Business continuity plans must be tested frequently, and updated where needed.
The plans must assume a wide range of threats.
The plans must take into account how much companies, agencies, and other entities depend on each other.
Key people from any organization must be available and reachable when an incident happens.
The ability to communicate, especially through landline phones, cell phones, and the internet, is vital.
Sites that organizations use for backup of their digital information should be located at a distance from their primary information technology site.
Employee support and counseling may be important during and after a crisis.
An organization should store copies of its business continuity plan at a location apart from its primary location.
Security perimeters around the scene of an incident may be large, which may affect employees’ access to organization facilities for long periods.

Legislation Governing Some Business Continuity Management and Planning

The United Kingdom did approved the Civil Contingencies Act in 2004, which requires businesses to have business continuity plans in place.

Some industries do have regulatory bodies that may impose business continuity requirements within those industries. For instance, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is a private self-regulatory organization overseeing the U.S. financial securities industry. FINRA established FINRA Rule 4370. This rule requires securities firms to create and maintain written business continuity plans. Utility bodies, such as North American Electric Reliability Corporation ( NERC ) and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ( FERC ), also require continuity plans.

Guidelines, Standards, and Resources Providing Guidance on Business Continuity Management and Planning

Organizational leaders can use a number of standards set by industry and other groups to guide their business continuity planning and management programs. Below are some commonly used standards:

ISO 22301 : Developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), a standard-setting body, this group of standards sets out appropriate business continuity management practices. Learn more about how this standard can help businesses of all sizes in our guide to ISO 22301 .
NFPA 1600 : Developed by the National Fire Protection Association, the standard is one of the most widely recognized in the U.S. on emergency preparedness and business continuity.
National Institute of Standards and Technology SP 800-34 : Sets contingency planning standards for federal information systems in the U.S.
SPC-2009 — Organizational Resilience : Security, Preparedness and Continuity Management Systems provides critical business and infrastructure security standards developed by the American Society for Industrial Security.
ISO 27000 : Standards for security in information technology systems, which include standards for business continuity in information technology. Learn more about ISO 27000 and find free checklists and templates .
DRI International : Professional Practices for Business Continuity Management
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA): Continuity Guidance Circular: Continuity Guidance for Non-Federal Entities: An 86-page formal document, the circular presents FEMA’s perspective on how businesses can prepare for disasters.
Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety: Open for Business Continuity Toolkit: This site offers a video, FAQ, and downloadable continuity planning tools.

What Is the Business Continuity Institute?

The Business Continuity Institute (BCI), based in the United Kingdom, is a non-profit professional organization providing education, certification, and leadership on business continuity management. The Institute has more than 8,000 members in more than 100 countries.

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How to create an effective business continuity plan

A business continuity plan outlines procedures and instructions an organization must follow in the face of disaster, whether fire, flood, or cyberattack. here’s how to create a plan that gives your business the best chance of surviving such an event..

Professional Meeting: Senior Businesswoman and Colleague in Discussion

The tumultuous events of the past several years have impacted practically every business. And with the number of extreme weather events, cyberattacks, and geopolitical conflicts continuing to rise, business leaders are bracing for the possibility of increasingly more frequent impactful incidents their organizations will need to respond to.

According to PwC’s 2023 Global Crisis and Resilience Survey , 96% of 1,812 business leaders said their organizations had experienced disruption in the past two years and 76% said their most serious disruption had a medium to high impact on operations.

It’s little wonder then that 89% of executives list resilience as one of their most important strategic priorities.

Yet at the same time, only 70% of respondents said they were confident in their organization’s ability to respond to disruptions, with PwC noting that its research shows that too many organizations “are lacking the foundational elements of resilience they need to be successful.”

A solid business continuity plan is one of those foundational elements.

“Every business should have the mindset that they will face a disaster, and every business needs a plan to address the different potential scenarios,” says Goh Ser Yoong, head of compliance at Advance.AI and a member of the Emerging Trends Working Group at the professional governance association ISACA.

A business continuity plan gives the organization the best shot at successfully navigating a disaster by providing ready-made directions on who should do what tasks in what order to keep the business viable.

Without such as a plan, the organization will take longer than necessary to recover from an event or incident — or may never recover at all.

What is a business continuity plan?

A business continuity plan (BCP) is a strategic playbook created to help an organization maintain or quickly resume business functions in the face of disruption, whether that disruption is caused by a natural disaster, civic unrest, cyberattack, or any other threat to business operations.

A business continuity plan outlines the procedures and instructions that the organization must follow during such an event to minimize downtime, covering business processes, assets, human resources, business partners, and more.

A business continuity plan is not the same as a disaster recovery plan , which focuses on restoring IT infrastructure and operations after a crisis. Still, a disaster recovery plan is part of the overall strategy to ensure business continuity, and the business continuity plan should inform the action items detailed in an organization’s disaster recovery plan. The two are tightly coupled, which is why they often are considered together and abbreviated as BCDR.

Why business continuity planning matters

Whether you operate a small business or a large corporation, it’s vital to retain and increase your customer base. There’s no better test of your capability to do so than right after an adverse event.

Because restoring IT is critical for most companies, numerous disaster recovery solutions are available. You can rely on IT to implement those solutions. But what about the rest of your business functions? Your company’s future depends on your people and processes. Being able to handle any incident effectively can have a positive effect on your company’s reputation and market value, and it can increase customer confidence.

Moreover, there are increasing consumer and regulatory expectations for both enterprise security and continuity today. Consequently, organizations must prioritize continuity planning to prevent not only business losses, but financial, legal, reputational, and regulatory consequences.

For example, the risk of having an organization’s “license to operate” withdrawn by a regulator or having conditions applied (retrospectively or prospectively) can adversely affect market value and consumer confidence.

Building (and updating) a business continuity plan

Whether building the organization’s first business continuity plan or updating an existing one, the process involves multiple essential steps.

Assess business processes for criticality and vulnerability: Business continuity planning “starts with understanding what’s most important to the business,” says Joe Nocera, principle in the cyber risk and regulatory practice at PwC, a professional services firm.

So the first step in building your business continuity plan is assessing your business processes to determine which are the most critical; which are the most vulnerable and to what type of events; and what are the potential losses if those processes go down for a day, a few days, or a week.

“This step essentially determines what you are trying to protect and what you are trying to keep up for systems,” says Todd Renner, senior managing director in the cybersecurity practice at FTI Consulting.

This assessment is more demanding than ever before because of the complexity of today’s hybrid workplace, the modern IT environment, and the reliance on business partners and third-party providers to perform or support critical processes.

Given that complexity, Goh says a thorough assessment requires an inventory of not only key processes but also the supporting components — including the IT systems, networks, people, and outside vendors — as well as the risks to those components.

This is essentially a business impact analysis.

Determine your organization’s RTO and RPO: The next step in building a business continuity plan is determining the organization’s recovery time objective (RTO), which is the target amount of time between point of failure and the resumption of operations, and the recovery point objective (RPO), which is the maximum amount of data loss an organization can withstand.

Each organization has its own RTO and RPO based on the nature of its business, industry, regulatory requirements, and other operational factors. Moreover, different parts of a business can have different RTOs and RPOs, which executives need to establish, Nocera says.

“When you meet with individual aspects of the business, everyone says everything [they do] is important; no one wants to say their part of the business is less critical, but in reality you have to have those challenging conversations and determinations about what is actually critical to the business and to business continuity,” he adds.

Detail the steps, roles, and responsibilities for continuity: Once that is done, business leaders should use the RTO and the RPO, along with the business impact analysis, to determine the specific tasks that need to happen, by whom, and in what order to ensure business continuity.

“It’s taking the key components of your analysis and designing a plan that outlines roles and responsibilities, about who does what. It gets into the nitty-gritty on how you’re going to keep the company up and running,” Renner explains.

One common business continuity planning tool is a checklist that includes supplies and equipment, the location of data backups and backup sites, where the plan is available and who should have it, and contact information for emergency responders, key personnel, and backup site providers.

Although the list of possible scenarios that could impact business operations can seem extensive, Goh says business leaders don’t have to compile an exhaustive list of potential incidents. Rather, they should compile a list that includes likely incidents as well as representative ones so that they can create responses that have a higher likelihood of ensuring continuity even when faced with an unimagined disaster.

“So even if it’s an unexpected event, they can pull those building blocks from the plan and apply them to the unique crisis they’re facing,” Nocera says.

The importance of testing the business continuity plan

Devising a business continuity plan is not enough to ensure preparedness; testing and practicing are other critical components.

Renner says testing and practicing offer a few important benefits.

First, they show whether or how well a plan will work.

Testing and practicing help prepare all stakeholders for an actual incident, helping them build the muscle memory needed to respond as quickly and as confidently as possible during a crisis.

They also help identify gaps in the devised plan. As Renner says: “Every tabletop exercise that I’ve ever done has been an eye-opener for everyone involved.”

Additionally, they help identify where there may be misalignment of objectives. For example, executives may have deprioritized the importance of restoring certain IT systems only to realize during a drill that those are essential for supporting critical processes.

Types and timing of tests

Many organizations test a business continuity plan two to four times a year. Experts say the frequency of tests, as well as reviews and updates, depends on the organization itself — its industry, its speed of innovation and transformation, the amount of turnover of key personnel, the number of business processes, and so on.

Common tests include tabletop exercises , structured walk-throughs, and simulations. Test teams are usually composed of the recovery coordinator and members from each functional unit.

A tabletop exercise usually occurs in a conference room with the team poring over the plan, looking for gaps and ensuring that all business units are represented therein.

In a structured walk-through, each team member walks through his or her components of the plan in detail to identify weaknesses. Often, the team works through the test with a specific disaster in mind. Some organizations incorporate drills and disaster role-playing into the structured walk-through. Any weaknesses should be corrected and an updated plan distributed to all pertinent staff.

Some experts also advise a full emergency evacuation drill at least once a year.

Meanwhile, disaster simulation testing — which can be quite involved — should still be performed annually. For this test, create an environment that simulates an actual disaster, with all the equipment, supplies and personnel (including business partners and vendors) who would be needed. The purpose of a simulation is to determine whether the organization and its staff can carry out critical business functions during an actual event.

During each phase of business continuity plan testing, include some new employees on the test team. “Fresh eyes” might detect gaps or lapses of information that experienced team members could overlook.

Reviewing and updating the business continuity plan should likewise happen on an ongoing basis.

“It should be a living document. It shouldn’t be shelved. It shouldn’t be just a check-the-box exercise,” Renner says.

Otherwise, plans go stale and are of no use when needed.

Bring key personnel together at least annually to review the plan and discuss any areas that must be modified.

Prior to the review, solicit feedback from staff to incorporate into the plan. Ask all departments or business units to review the plan, including branch locations or other remote units.

Furthermore, a strong business continuity function calls for reviewing the organization’s response in the event of an actual event. This allows executives and their teams to identify what the organization did well and where it needs to improve.

How to ensure business continuity plan support, awareness

One way to ensure your plan is not successful is to adopt a casual attitude toward its importance. Every business continuity plan must be supported from the top down. That means senior management must be represented when creating and updating the plan; no one can delegate that responsibility to subordinates. In addition, the plan is likely to remain fresh and viable if senior management makes it a priority by dedicating time for adequate review and testing.

Management is also key to promoting user awareness. If employees don’t know about the plan, how will they be able to react appropriately when every minute counts?

Although plan distribution and training can be conducted by business unit managers or HR staff, have someone from the top kick off training and punctuate its significance. It’ll have a greater impact on all employees, giving the plan more credibility and urgency.

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What Is Business Continuity?

Business continuity is an organization's ability to maintain or quickly resume acceptable levels of product or service delivery following a short-term event that disrupts normal operations. Examples of disruptions range from natural disasters to power outages.

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Is business continuity the same as business resilience or disaster recovery?

Business continuity, disaster recovery, and business resilience are not the same, but they are related.

Business continuity is a process-driven approach to maintaining operations in the event of an unplanned disruption such as a cyber attack or natural disaster. Business continuity planning covers the entire business—processes, assets, workers, and more. It isn't focused solely on IT infrastructure and business systems.
Business resilience encompasses crisis management and business continuity. It requires a response to all types of risk that an organization may face. An organization that is business resilient is essentially in a constant state of "expecting the unexpected." It means continuously preparing to meet disruptions head-on, including events of extended duration that may affect more than one facility or region.
Disaster recovery focuses specifically on how to restore an enterprise's IT infrastructure and business systems following a disruption. It is considered an element of business continuity. A business continuity plan (BCP) might contain several disaster recovery plans, for example.

What is a business continuity strategy?

A business continuity strategy is a summary of the mitigation, crisis, and recovery plans to be implemented after a disruption to resume normal operations. "Business continuity strategy" is often used interchangeably with "business continuity plan." Both consider the broader goals, legal and regulatory requirements, personnel, and even the business's clients and partners.

What does a business continuity plan mitigate?

A relevant and well-tested BCP can help ease the negative impacts of an unexpected business disruption in many ways.

Financial impact: Disruptions to product supply chains and critical services to customers can directly affect sales and revenue. Downtime caused by unplanned disruptions can also result in higher costs for a business as it looks to repair operations and mitigate previously unidentified threats.
Reputation and brand impact: Failure to resume operations quickly and supply customers with the products or services they expect can prompt customer defections and tarnish the brand. Damage to reputation can in turn cause investors and capital sources to pull back funding, exacerbating the financial impact of a business disruption.
Regulatory impact: Customers and vendors are likely to complain when businesses fail to respond appropriately to disruptions, which may result in regulatory scrutiny or even censure. In highly-regulated industries, such as energy and financial services, business continuity planning is mandatory to ensure regulatory compliance.

Business continuity planning activities

A well-crafted and tested BCP can go a long way toward helping a business recover swiftly from a disruption. These are key steps a business may want to take.

Identifying critical business areas and functions

Business continuity planning begins with identifying an organization's key business areas and the critical functions within those areas. A business needs to determine and document the acceptable downtime for each area and function considered vital to operations. Then a plan to restore operations can be established, documented, and communicated.

Analyzing risks, threats, and potential impacts

Creating appropriate response scenarios requires knowing what disruptions the business could experience. An upfront analysis of risks and threats is necessary in order to prepare contingency responses to events. Organizations can also conduct a back-end analysis after an event to gather metrics and assess lessons learned. This information can drive improvements in how the business responds to disruptions.

Outlining and assigning responsibilities

A BCP details which personnel will be responsible for implementing specific aspects of the plan. It also identifies key decision-makers and a chain of command. The plan should include alternative options in case primary personnel are incapacitated or unavailable to respond to the disruption.

Defining and documenting alternatives

A business continuity plan should define and document alternative communication strategies in case telephone services or the internet are down. Enterprises should also have alternatives for mission-critical spaces such as data centers or manufacturing facilities in case buildings are damaged.

Assessing the need for critical backups

Essential equipment may be damaged or unavailable during a disruptive event. A business should consider whether it has access to backup equipment and uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) during extended power outages. Business-critical data needs to be backed up regularly, and is mandatory in many regulated industries.

Testing, training, and communication

Business continuity plans need to be tested to ensure they will be effective. (Disaster recovery plans should be tested as well.) A best practice is to conduct a plan review at least quarterly with leadership and key team members who are responsible for executing the plan.

Many companies use role-playing sessions, simulations, and other types of exercises several times per year to test their BCPs. This approach helps to identify gaps, develop strategies for improvement, and determine if more resources are needed. Targeted staff training and communicating to the whole workforce the benefits of having a business continuity plan are also vital to its success.

Understanding the Essentials of a Business Continuity Plan

In the face of unforeseen disruptions, a robust business continuity plan (BCP) is essential to preserve the trust of stakeholders. If you are able to seamlessly continue operations even in the face of sudden challenges, stakeholders are reassured of the company’s resilience and commitment to their interests.

In this blog post, we offer a comprehensive guide to business continuity planning, how it can benefit organizations and share key insights into Developing and Maintaining an Effective business continuity plan.

What is a Business Continuity Plan?

A business continuity plan (BCP) is an essential blueprint that outlines how a company will continue operating during an unplanned disruption in service. It’s more than just a reactive strategy; it’s a proactive measure to ensure that critical business functions can continue during and after a crisis. The purpose of a BCP is to provide a systematic approach to mitigate the potential impact of disruptions and maintain business operations at an acceptable predefined level.

The role of a BCP is crucial in maintaining operations during unforeseen events such as natural disasters, cyber-attacks, or any other incident that could interrupt business processes. By having a well-structured business continuity plan, organizations can:

Minimize downtime and ensure that essential functions remain operational
Protect the integrity of data and IT infrastructure
Maintain customer service and preserve stakeholder trust

Why is a Business Continuity Plan Important

Immediate Response : A BCP ensures that there is a predefined action plan, minimizing downtime and demonstrating control over the situation.

Transparent Communication : Keeping stakeholders informed during a crisis promotes transparency and maintains confidence in the company’s management.

Inclusive Planning : Involve stakeholders in the business continuity plan development process. Their insights can enhance the plan’s effectiveness and ensure their needs are addressed.

Consistency in Service : By prioritizing critical operations, a BCP helps maintain the quality and consistency of services or products, which is important for customer retention.

The absence of a business continuity plan can lead to a domino effect of negative outcomes, including a tarnished reputation and the potential loss of future business. Stakeholders remember how a company responds in a crisis, and a well-executed BCP can be the difference between a temporary setback and a long-term impact on the company’s image and relationships.

Elements of a Business Continuity Plan

When exploring various business continuity plan examples, certain common elements emerge as critical for their effectiveness. These elements serve as the backbone for a robust BCP plan, ensuring that businesses can maintain operations and protect their reputation during unforeseen events. Here are some of the key components found in successful BCP examples:

Risk Assessment and Business Impact Analysis : Identifying potential threats and assessing their impact on business operations is a foundational step in any BCP plan.

Crisis Communication Plan : A clear communication strategy is essential to manage stakeholder expectations and maintain trust.

Recovery Strategies : Detailed procedures for restoring business functions and services post-disruption are indispensable.

Employee Training and Awareness : Ensuring staff are well-prepared and knowledgeable about the BCP plan is crucial for its successful implementation.

Case studies of successful BCP implementations often highlight how these elements are tailored to fit specific business models and industries. For instance, a financial institution may focus heavily on data security and regulatory compliance within their BCP, while a manufacturing business might prioritize supply chain alternatives and on-site safety protocols. Regular testing and adjustment of these plans are also a common thread, underscoring the importance of adaptability and continuous improvement in business continuity planning.

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Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery

It’s important to distinguish between a business continuity plan and a disaster recovery plan. While both are vital, a BCP is broader and focuses on the continuity of the entire business, whereas a disaster recovery plan is more technical and concentrates on the recovery of specific operations, such as IT services. Understanding these differences helps organizations allocate resources effectively and ensures comprehensive preparedness for any type of disruption. Understanding when to activate a business continuity plan (BCP) versus a disaster recovery plan is crucial for maintaining operational resilience.

To ensure a comprehensive crisis management strategy, consider the following integration points:

Pre-emptive Planning : Establish clear triggers for when each plan is activated. For instance, a BCP might be initiated in the face of a supply chain disruption, while disaster recovery would come into play during a data breach or server failure.

Unified Communication : Both plans should have a coordinated communication strategy to inform stakeholders and employees about the status and steps being taken.

Regular Testing : Conduct joint drills that test both the BCP and disaster recovery plans to identify any gaps or overlaps in procedures.

Continuous Improvement : Use insights from drills and actual incidents to refine both plans, ensuring they evolve with the changing business landscape and technological advancements.

By integrating both plans, organizations can navigate crises with agility and confidence, minimizing downtime and protecting their reputation. Tools like Creately, with features such as real-time collaboration and visual project management, can help create and maintain these critical plans, ensuring that all stakeholders are on the same page and ready to act when necessary.

Crisis Communication Strategies within Business Continuity Planning

A business continuity plan (BCP) is not just about responding to the crisis at hand, but also about how you communicate during the disruptions and the decisions you make. Here are some best practices to ensure your crisis communication and decision-making processes effective:

Clear Communication Channels : Establish predefined channels for internal and external communication. This ensures that messages are consistent and reach all stakeholders promptly.

Designated Spokespersons : Identify individuals who are authorized to speak on behalf of the company during a crisis. This helps maintain a unified voice and message.

Factual Updates : Provide regular, factual updates to keep stakeholders informed. Avoid speculation and commit to transparency.

Decision-Making Protocols : Implement decision-making protocols that are clear and allow for swift action. This includes having a chain of command and predefined criteria for making critical decisions.

Training and Simulations : Regularly train your crisis management team and conduct simulations to prepare for potential scenarios. This ensures that when a crisis does occur, your team is ready to act effectively.

By integrating these best practices into your BCP plan, you can maintain control during a crisis, make informed decisions, and communicate effectively with all parties involved. Remember, the goal is to protect your company’s operations, reputation, and stakeholder relationships during unexpected events.

Utilizing Business Continuity Plan Templates and Tools

When it comes to developing a robust business continuity plan (BCP), leveraging templates can offer a significant head start. These templates serve as a foundational framework that can be customized to align with the specific requirements of your business. Here’s why using BCP templates is advantageous:

Efficiency in Development : BCP templates provide a structured approach, ensuring that all critical elements are considered without starting from scratch. This saves valuable time and resources.

Consistency Across the Organization : Templates help maintain a uniform response strategy, which is crucial for coherent and coordinated action during a crisis.

Ease of Customization : While templates offer a general outline, they are designed to be adaptable. This means you can tailor them to reflect your business’s unique operational processes, risk profile, and recovery objectives.

Incorporating features like crisis response directions into your BCP template is essential. With Creately you can,

Visualize these procedures on an infinite canvas, ensuring clarity and accessibility for all team members.
Easily modify the plan as your business evolves, with the drag-and-drop functionality, making regular testing and adjustment a seamless process.
Create a central repository of information by having docs, links and attachments in the notes panel of any shape in your diagram.

Key Insights for Developing and Maintaining an Effective Business Continuity Plan

A robust business continuity plan (BCP) is not a ‘set it and forget it’ document; it requires ongoing attention and refinement. Here’s why regular testing, updates, and staff training are non-negotiables in business continuity:

Financial Protection : By regularly testing your BCP, you can identify and rectify gaps that could otherwise lead to significant financial losses during a crisis. It’s not just about having a plan, but ensuring it works effectively when you need it most.

Reputational Safeguarding : Your company’s reputation is on the line when disaster strikes. A well-rehearsed BCP means your team can respond swiftly and competently, preserving stakeholder trust and customer loyalty.

Customization for Evolving Threats : The threat landscape is constantly changing. Regular BCP reviews allow you to tailor your plan to new types of risks, ensuring your business remains resilient against the unforeseen.

Empowered Employees : Training staff on the BCP turns theory into practice. When every team member knows their role in a crisis, response times improve, and confusion is minimized.

Remember, a BCP is a living document. It thrives on the feedback loop created by regular drills and updates, ensuring that when a crisis does occur, your business is prepared not just to survive, but to continue operations with minimal disruption.

Join over thousands of organizations that use Creately to brainstorm, plan, analyze, and execute their projects successfully.

Article's content

Business continuity planning (bcp), what is business continuity.

In an IT context, business continuity is the capability of your enterprise to stay online and deliver products and services during disruptive events, such as natural disasters, cyberattacks and communication failures.

The core of this concept is the business continuity plan — a defined strategy that includes every facet of your organization and details procedures for maintaining business availability.

Start with a business continuity plan

Business continuity management starts with planning how to maintain your critical functions (e.g., IT, sales and support) during and after a disruption.

A business continuity plan (BCP) should comprise the following element

1. Threat Analysis

The identification of potential disruptions, along with potential damage they can cause to affected resources. Examples include:

2. Role assignment

Every organization needs a well-defined chain of command and substitute plan to deal with absence of staff in a crisis scenario. Employees must be cross-trained on their responsibilities so as to be able to fill in for one another.

Internal departments (e.g., marketing, IT, human resources) should be broken down into teams based on their skills and responsibilities. Team leaders can then assign roles and duties to individuals according to your organization’s threat analysis.

3. Communications

A communications strategy details how information is disseminated immediately following and during a disruptive event, as well as after it has been resolved.

Your strategy should include:

Methods of communication (e.g., phone, email, text messages)
Established points of contact (e.g., managers, team leaders, human resources) responsible for communicating with employees
Means of contacting employee family members, media, government regulators, etc.

From electrical power to communications and data, every critical business component must have an adequate backup plan that includes:

Data backups to be stored in different locations. This prevents the destruction of both the original and backup copies at the same time. If necessary, offline copies should be kept as well.
Backup power sources, such as generators and inverters that are provisioned to deal with power outages.
Backup communications (e.g., mobile phones and text messaging to replace land lines) and backup services (e.g., cloud email services to replace on-premise servers).

Load balancing business continuity

Load balancing maintains business continuity by distributing incoming requests across multiple backend servers in your data center. This provides redundancy in the event of a server failure, ensuring continuous application uptime.

In contrast to the reactive measures used in failover and disaster recovery (described below) load balancing is a preventative measure. Health monitoring tracks server availability, ensuring accurate load distribution at all times—including during disruptive events.

Disaster recovery plan (DCP) – Your second line of defense

Even the most carefully thought out business continuity plan is never completely foolproof. Despite your best efforts, some disasters simply cannot be mitigated. A disaster recovery plan (DCP) is a second line of defense that enables you to bounce back from the worst disruptions with minimal damage.

As the name implies, a disaster recovery plan deals with the restoration of operations after a major disruption. It’s defined by two factors: RTO and RPO .

Recovery time objective (RTO) – The acceptable downtime for critical functions and components, i.e., the maximum time it should take to restore services. A different RTO should be assigned to each of your business components according to their importance (e.g., ten minutes for network servers, an hour for phone systems).
Recovery point objective (RPO) – The point to which your state of operations must be restored following a disruption. In relation to backup data, this is the oldest age and level of staleness it can have. For example, network servers updated hourly should have a maximum RPO of 59 minutes to avoid data loss.

Deciding on specific RTOs and RPOs helps clearly show the technical solutions needed to achieve your recovery goals. In most cases the decision is going to boil down to choosing the right failover solution.

See how Imperva Load Balancer can help you with business continuity planning.

Choosing the right failover solutions

Failover is the switching between primary and backup systems in the event of failure, outage or downtime. It’s the key component of your disaster recovery and business continuity plans.

A failover system should address both RTO and RPO goals by keeping backup infrastructure and data at the ready. Ideally, your failover solution should seamlessly kick in to insulate end users from any service degradation.

When choosing a solution, the two most important aspects to consider are its technological prowess and its service level agreement (SLA). The latter is often a reflection of the former.

For an IT organization charged with the business continuity of a website or web application, there are three failover options:

Hardware solutions – A separate set of servers, set up and maintained internally, are kept on-premise to come online in the event of failure. However, note that keeping such servers at the same location makes them potentially susceptible to being taken down by the same disaster/disturbance.
DNS services – DNS services are often used in conjunction with hardware solutions to redirect traffic to a backup server(s) at an external data center. A downside of this setup includes TTL-related delays that can prevent seamless disaster recovery. Additionally, managing both DNS and internal data center hardware failover solutions is time consuming and complicated.
On-edge services – On-edge failover is a managed solution operating from off-prem (e.g., from the CDN layer). Such solutions are more affordable and, most importantly, have no TTL reliance, resulting in near-instant failover that allows you to meet the most aggressive RTO goals.

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How to craft an effective business continuity plan

Let me take you back in time to the United Kingdom in the 1970s. Punk music was gaining popularity, and the Sex Pistols entered the punk rock scene with the force of a shooting star, capturing fans’ attention.

How To Craft An Effective Business Continuity Plan

But as quickly as they arrived, they quickly left the scene. When they broke up in 1978 after a period of internal conflicts, legal troubles, and their frontman’s imprisonment, fans were left both shocked and surprised.

Just like the Sex Pistols, plenty of companies experience rapid growth and success, only to face unexpected challenges and internal conflicts that result in their downfall.

In this article, we’ll draw inspiration from the Sex Pistols’ turbulent journey to explore the concept of business continuity planning (BCP). We’ll look at what a BCP is, why you need one and delve into the strategies and contingency measures that can help you maintain your rhythm and continuity, even when faced with the inevitable storms that can disrupt your operations.

What is a business continuity plan?

A business continuity plan describes how you’ll continue your business when disaster hits. It is a structured strategy outlining how your organization will maintain essential functions when disaster strikes, to ensure minimal downtime and guarantee that operations continue.

Why do you need a BCP in place?

The BCP is crucial and revolves around ensuring your resilience and ability to continue operating in the face of unexpected disruptions, such as natural disasters, cyberattacks, or other emergencies.

Let’s look at it a bit closer, and understand some of the key reasons to have a BCP better:

Minimize downtime

Protect revenue and reputation, compliance and legal requirements, resource allocation, maintain customer service, employee safety.

A BCP helps you minimize downtime. It does this by providing a structured approach to quickly recover and resume your critical business functions.

Example: You’re a retail company with an extensive online presence. If your website experiences a cyberattack that takes it offline, a well-prepared BCP outlines the steps to take to mitigate the attack, get your website back up in no time, and allow you to continue serving your customers.

No one likes disruptions as they result in revenue loss and can damage your reputation. A BCP helps you protect against financial losses and keep customer trust.

Example: You’re the owner of a restaurant chain with multiple locations and one of your branches has a food safety crisis. A BCP can guide you in managing the crisis, ensuring food safety compliance, and communicating effectively with customers to maintain trust in the brand and other locations.

Some industries, like the financial, and pharma industries, have regulatory requirements that mandate businesses to have BCPs in place. Failure to do so has legal and financial consequences.

Example: You’re the owner of a FinTech company. You are required by regulators to have robust BCPs to ensure customer data security and financial system stability.

When a crisis hits you need the right resources to get you back up and running. A BCP helps allocate resources effectively during a crisis, ensuring that personnel, equipment, and materials are used efficiently to address the most critical needs.

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Example: You’re a manufacturing company hit by a sudden supply chain disruption because the Suez Canal is blocked again. You use your BCP to allocate available resources to meet customer demands and minimize production delays.

When all hell breaks loose you want to make sure customer experience takes a minimum blow. A BCP outlines measures to maintain customer service and communication, so customers receive timely updates and support.

Example: You run an airline and there is a labor strike. Your BCP tells you how to manage customer inquiries, rebook affected passengers, and maintain a level of service.

Let’s not forget about the well-being of your employees. During a crisis, this is a top priority. A BCP includes procedures for evacuations, remote work arrangements, and employee support.

Example: There is a fire at your workplace. The BCP outlines evacuation routes, assembly points, and contact information for employees to report their safety status.

Business continuity planning: Steps for success

That’s a lot of reasons, right? Now that we addressed the necessity and urgency of having BCP, let’s look at 5 steps to creating a successful one:

Analyze your company
Assess the risk
Create the procedures
Get the word out
Iterate and improve

1. Analyze your company

In this phase you conduct an analysis to identify critical activities, determine which activities must continue, which can be temporarily paused, and which can operate at a reduced capacity.

You then assess the financial impact of disruptions. This involves asking yourself the question, “How long can I operate without generating revenue and incurring recovery costs?”

As this step covers your whole company, it’s important to get key stakeholders involved from the beginning.

2. Assess the risk

Now you have a good overview of your critical processes and the impact of disruption. At this point, pivot your attention to the risks they face, how well you can handle when things don’t work as usual, and how long you can manage if things go wrong.

The goal here is to understand what could go wrong and find ways to avoid, reduce, or transfer them. This assessment will help you strengthen your preparedness and resilience.

3. Create the procedures

Once you analyze and assess, you need to create procedures.

Develop detailed, step-by-step procedures to minimize risks to your organization’s people, operations, and assets. This can include changes to your operating model, such as using alternative suppliers or implementing remote work options.

4. Get the word out

A plan is just a plan and no one will know how to act if you don’t communicate.

This step is all about communication. Integrate the BCP into your operations, policies, and company culture, and train, test, and communicate with your employees.

And don’t forget that communication is not limited to your company only. Communicate with external stakeholders, customers, suppliers, and so forth.

5. Iterate and improve

Before implementing your BCP ensure its effectiveness.

Don’t worry there are plenty more options to test your BCP. Consider involving external stakeholders or vendors as it makes exercises more realistic. Frequently train those who are accountable for executing the BCP.

After experiencing a real incident or conducting a training exercise, update your plan to improve its ability to protect your business. Keep in mind that both your organization’s development and the circumstances you operate in change, so a regular review isn’t a luxury but a necessity.

How to structure your continuity plan

Now you have a high-level understanding, let’s look at how to structure your business continuity plan.

You can find a copy of the template I use here .

Make sure to include the following sections in your BCP:

Version history

Executive summary, functions and process prioritization, plan activation, governance and responsibilities, recovery plans, crisis communication plan, emergency location and contents, review and testing.

This section shows the revision history. It includes the version numbers of the changes made, by whom, when, and who approved the changes. The revision history allows anyone reading the BCP to understand how it has evolved over time.

The executive summary provides a brief summary of the key objectives, goals, scope, and applicability of the BCP.

This chapter outlines the critical functions and processes in scope of continuation in case of a disastrous event.

This section refers to the risk and business impact assessment outcome. Its aim is to set out what triggers the activation of the plan.

Governance and responsibilities talks about who has to act when the BCP is activated. It includes the members, a description of their responsibilities, contact details of the BCP team, and the chain of command during a crisis.

This section builds upon the business continuity strategies, specifically the one chosen when a disaster occurs. It describes the detailed recovery plans for each critical function, the procedures for restarting operations, resource allocation, and recovery time objectives (RTOs).

Here you cover the internal and external communication strategies. You also address employee awareness and training activities.

Now there is a good chance the disaster will require your crucial activities to temporarily continue at a different location. This section covers all details about the location and what needs to be available at the location.

The BCP is to be tested to reduce the risk of missing things or even worse failing. Here jot down the testing procedures and document results and lessons learned.

This section includes all appendices. Think about the following

Supporting documents, such as contact lists, maps, and technical specifications
References to external standards, guidelines, or regulations
Training programs for BCP team members
Review of insurance policies
Financial reserves and funding for recovery efforts
Procedures for keeping the BCP documentation up to date

Business continuity plan example

Earlier this year, the Koninklijke Nederlands Voetbal Bond (KNVB), which is the Royal Dutch Football Association, was hit by ransomware. The cyberattackers threatened to share personally identifiable information captured and the KNVB paid over one million euros to avoid this from happening.

What could have been done to mitigate the ransomware attack risk?

The Risk of the attack to succeed could have been mitigated with:

Regular data backups
Segmentation of networks
Intrusion detection systems

How to ensure business continuity in case of ransomware?

In response to the ransomware incident, and to allow for continued business as usual as soon as possible, steps could include:

Isolating affected systems
Activating backups
Notifying law enforcement
Engaging with a cybersecurity incident response team

Key takeaways

A business continuity plan (BCP) is like a safety net for your business when things go haywire. It helps you keep going, avoiding downtime, revenue loss, and reputation hits. On top of that, it’s a legal must in certain industries.

To make a solid BCP, just follow five steps: figure out what’s crucial for your business, spot the risks, plan how to bounce back, make sure everyone knows the plan, and keep fine-tuning it.

Structurally, your BCP should have sections like history, a quick guide, what’s most important, when to activate it, who’s in charge, the nitty-gritty recovery plans, how communication is done, where to go in a crisis, how to test the BCP works, and some extra info.

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Business Continuity Plan

What is a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)?

A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a detailed strategy and set of systems for ensuring an organization’s ability to prevent or rapidly recover from a significant disruption to its operations. The plan is essentially a playbook for how any type of organization—such as a private-sector company, a government agency or a school—will continue its day-to-day business during a disaster scenario or otherwise abnormal conditions.

Examples of such disruptions include a fire, a major earthquake or other a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, a cyberattack and many other scenarios that could upend “business as usual.” When such events significantly disrupt an organization’s normal routines, it turns to its business continuity plan for instructions, processes and tools it needs to continue to operate or to quickly recover from downtime.

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Why is a business continuity plan important.

Risks can be managed, but they can’t be eliminated. Business continuity planning is critical because without it, an organization faces downtime and other problems that could damage its financial health. In major disasters, a lack of a business continuity plan could cause irreparable financial harm that might ultimately force a company to permanently close.

How to create a Business Continuity Plan?

There are many frameworks for creating an effective business continuity plan. Most of them cover three overlapping phases:

Analysis : In this phase, you identify and evaluate the various functions of your business and its operations. Then, you determine how those different functions will be affected by a disaster. This phase usually entails prioritizing different areas or departments in terms of how important they are to your operation, so that your plan ultimately ensures the continuity of your most critical functions first. Business continuity professionals often conduct a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) at the outset of developing a new plan. A BIA estimates the consequences of different disaster scenarios in terms of lost revenue and other business-specific metrics.
Planning : Once an initial analysis is complete, the next phase entails all facets of developing an actual plan for continuing to operate in a disaster, or rapidly recovering from a disruption to normal operations. During the planning phase, organizations:
Develop protocols for potential needs such as a rapid relocation or shift to remote work .
Strategize temporary staffing changes or needs.
Implement IT disaster recovery tools to ensure continuity of critical systems.

A key part of this phase is to name a continuity or crisis management team, comprised of executives and stakeholders who will lead the plan’s implementation if necessary.

Training and Testing : Even the most robust BCP must be put through regular testing to ensure it will work if needed. This includes educating employees on their roles and responsibilities in these scenarios, as well as conducting trials of various elements of the plan. An example would include a short-term rollout of a remote work scenario to identify issues and opportunities for optimization.

Key features of a business continuity plan

Some features of a BCP will be industry or business-specific, but there are components that are common to almost any plan:

People : A BCP will clearly define roles and responsibilities, not just for the crisis management leadership team, but also for any units responsible for implementing different pieces of the plan in a disaster scenario. Some BCPs will also define “essential personnel”—for example, people whose job requires them to report to work even in periods of heightened risk.

Technology : Almost all modern business continuity plans will also clearly outline the role that information technology will play in ensuring critical data, applications and services remain available or are quickly restored after an interruption. These include:

Data backup and recovery tools
Cloud computing infrastructure and services
Remote work platforms

Service Delivery : A BCP should also describe which services are most critical and how they will continue to be delivered to customers, employees, partners, the public and other stakeholders.

Health & Safety : Finally, a strong business continuity program will include criteria and guidelines for ensuring the health and safety of all people involved—employees, customers, partners—as the plan is implemented and managed.

Business Continuity Plan checklist

Many organizations create a checklist as part of their business continuity planning. This is a list of all of the key steps in the BCP. It can be used in two ways:

Conception : First, it can be used as part of the initial creation of the plan. In this context, the BCP checklist would describe in detail the steps necessary to develop the plan, from analysis through testing.
Implementation : Second, a BCP checklist can be used for testing and/or actually implementing the plan. In this context, the BCP or crisis management team would use the checklist to ensure that it addresses all of the plan’s tools and processes and communicates them effectively throughout the organization.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning

Business continuity planning and disaster recovery planning are often mentioned in similar contexts, but they are not interchangeable terms. A business continuity plan is an overarching strategy for operating in disaster scenarios or recovering from a major disruption.

A disaster recovery (DR) plan refers more specifically to the IT processes and tools you can rely on to retain or restore access to mission-critical data, applications, and services in these scenarios. A DR plan would detail, for example, how you could restore access to a revenue-generating web application in the event of a flood in the data center that powers that service.

How often should a Business Continuity Plan be reviewed?

Most experts recommend that business continuity plans be reviewed regularly and updated as needed. This helps ensure that the plan will still meet the organization’s needs in the face of evolving risks and threats.

The frequency with which you review a business continuity plan depends on many factors, including the nature of the organization, its industry and its particular risks. As a general rule of thumb, such plans should be reviewed annually or at least every other year. However, there are multiple scenarios where an organization may want to consider more frequent reviews, including:

Significant changes to the business or its operations
Location in a region at greater risk for natural disasters or other potentially disruptive events
Any organization or agency that provides essential services to the public

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What is a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)? Purpose, Template & Examples

Marie Laure Troadec Legal Counsel
August 29, 2023

Key Takeaways

1. A business continuity plan is an essential risk management tool that helps organizations proactively prepare for unexpected disruptions and events, ensuring the continuity of critical operations.

2. By identifying and assessing potential risks and threats to their operations, businesses can develop appropriate response strategies to prevent or minimize disruption during challenging times.

3. Businesses should avoid certain pitfalls to successfully implement their business continuity plan. These include a lack of employee engagement, an over-reliance on technology, and a failure to test their plans.

4. By proactively addressing these areas, businesses can increase the chances of successful implementation and execution of their business continuity plans.

Ensuring business continuity is a topic high on the agenda for most businesses and one that has become increasingly paramount in light of recent events: Few things have focused attention on the need to have a contingency plan more than the COVID-19 pandemic. The potential disruption caused by a pandemic, or indeed any other unforeseen event, to a business’s operations can have significant financial, legal, and reputational ramifications that can be mitigated or even prevented if appropriate measures are put in place.

This article delves into the essential elements of a business continuity plan (BCP) and provides valuable guidance on avoiding common pitfalls to help your business implement and execute a robust plan that safeguards your operations.

What is a Business Continuity Plan?

A business continuity plan is a risk management strategy that a business implements to protect its operations in the face of an unexpected event or disruption such as a natural disaster, cyberattack, or technological failure. By anticipating and preparing for potential crises or unplanned eventualities, businesses can take preemptive measures to ensure they remain operational and maintain a sense of normalcy despite interruptions.

The business continuity planning process enables businesses to assess potential threats to their operations and identify vulnerabilities that could impact their ability to function effectively. Through the implementation of a business continuity plan, business leaders can swiftly respond to emergencies, minimizing any potential downtime and mitigating the negative effects on their operations. This proactive approach can help businesses navigate challenging situations with relative ease and resilience, ensuring minimal impact on their productivity and profits.

Main Elements of a Business Continuity Plan

A robust and effective business continuity plan will comprise the following key elements that facilitate business resilience and preparedness during uncertain times.

Business impact analysis
During this phase, a business will identify and assess potential risks and threats to their organization’s operations. A business impact analysis (BIA) assesses the potential consequences of disruptions in critical business functions. This allows businesses to prioritize resources, allocate budgets, and develop strategies to minimize downtime and facilitate recovery.
Recovery strategies
This step addresses the risks identified in the BIA by developing appropriate responses to prevent or minimize disruption. Recovery strategies outline the immediate actions required following an incident, those responsible for implementing them and coordinating the allocation of resources.
Plan development
The plan development phase involves developing the framework of the business continuity plan by establishing the relevant recovery teams, establishing communication channels, creating relocation plans, and gaining management buy-in.
Testing and maintenance
This phase involves training and testing the relevant teams and systems by conducting exercises to measure the effectiveness of the business continuity plan and identifying areas for improvement. Processes are also established for regularly reviewing and updating the business continuity plan to account for changes in technology, previous incidents, and evolving threats and risks.

Common Business Continuity Plan Pitfalls

To ensure the efficacy of their response during unexpected events or disruptions, organizations should be mindful of common mistakes encountered in the business continuity planning process.

An awareness of the following issues can help businesses avoid certain pitfalls which could hinder their efforts in this area:

1. Lack of employee engagement

The success of any business continuity plan hinges on an organization’s ability to execute it successfully as even the most comprehensive and detailed plan will fall flat if it is ineffective in real-world situations.

The successful execution of a business continuity plan goes beyond senior management. To ensure business continuity in times of trouble it is essential that those on the ground have also been briefed on contingency measures and are ready to step into action accordingly. Without adequate employee training and awareness, organizations run the risk of compromising critical business functions leading to further disruptions and losses.

By prioritizing employee engagement and involvement in the business continuity plan, organizations can strengthen and streamline their response efforts ensuring a robust and resilient response to potential disruptions, while fostering a culture of confidence and preparedness within their organization.

2. Overreliance on technology

While technological solutions play a crucial role and should be a feature of any robust business continuity plan, an overreliance on digital services and technical infrastructure can pose potential challenges for organizations.

Sole or heavy reliance on this area increases the risk of a single point of failure. This is especially pertinent at a time when cyberattacks and data breaches are prevalent creating vulnerabilities in a business’ technological systems, and thereby undermining the effectiveness of its business continuity plan. Unforeseen events such as natural disasters which can lead to infrastructure damage and power outages can also severely compromise an organization’s ability to function effectively during a crisis.

To counter these problems, organizations should incorporate a diverse range of technological and non-technological solutions into their business continuity plan, taking into account manual processes and alternatives that are not solely dependent on digital services. Data backup options should also be put in place to help businesses restore swift operations and minimize extended downtime.

3. Failure to test

Without proper testing, the effectiveness of a business continuity plan remains theoretical rather than proven in practice. Regular testing enables businesses to identify and address any gaps or limitations in their plan, avoiding the risk of critical business functions being left vulnerable in an actual crisis situation.

Through drills, real-life simulations, and tabletop exercises, organizations can learn from real-world incidents, gaining practical insight into the feasibility of their business continuity plans and identifying any areas that require improvement. Regular testing plays a crucial role in helping businesses to optimize their response strategies and ensure resilience and readiness in the face of difficult or unforeseen circumstances.

By proactively addressing and avoiding these common pitfalls, businesses can develop comprehensive business continuity plans that help to bolster their resilience, minimize disruptions, and ensure the continuity of their operations during challenging times.

BCP Template

The precise content of your BCP will depend on the nature of your business. However, below is a useful template for a typical business:

1. Introduction

Purpose: Outline the purpose of the BCP.
Scope: Specify which parts of the organization this BCP covers.
Assumptions: State any assumptions made during the BCP’s creation.

2. Business Continuity Policy

Outline the company’s policy regarding business continuity. This can include the company’s commitment to employee safety, client service, data protection, etc.

3. Roles and Responsibilities

List the key personnel responsible for executing the BCP:

Business Continuity Manager/Coordinator
Crisis Communication Team
Emergency Response Team
IT Recovery Team
Employee Assistance Team

4. Risk Assessment

Identify potential risks and threats:

Natural disasters
Technological failures
Security breaches

5. Business Impact Analysis (BIA)

Identify the potential impacts of each threat:

Financial impacts
Reputational impacts
Operational impacts
Legal/Regulatory impacts

6. Business Continuity Strategies

Outline strategies for:

Data backup and recovery
Alternate work locations
Communication protocols
Supply chain management

7. Incident Response Plan

Details the immediate actions to be taken following an incident:

Alert and notification procedures
Evacuation procedures
Safety checks

8. Recovery Plans

For each critical department/function, provide a detailed plan on how to resume operations:

IT systems recovery
Resumption of critical business functions
Communication with stakeholders

9. Training and Testing

Outline how the plan will be tested and how often, as well as any training programs for employees:

Tabletop exercises
Full-scale drills
Employee training sessions

10. Maintenance and Review

Describe how the plan will be kept current:

Regularly scheduled reviews
Updates following any changes in the business environment or operations
Feedback loop from testing

11. Communication Protocols

Specify how communication will be maintained:

Emergency contact lists
Communication methods (phone, email, etc.)
External communication (with media, stakeholders, etc.)

12. Appendices

Resource lists
Vendor contacts
Floor plans
Backup data locations

Business Continuity Plan Examples

If you are looking for some other examples of well-designed BCPs and BCP templates, check out the following:

Durham County Council’s BCP
Chisholm & Winch (UK Construction Company)
Ready (US Government Disaster Response Resource).

Developing and implementing business continuity plans

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Contact us today to learn how we can support your business continuity efforts and provide the stability and peace of mind you need in an ever-changing world.

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Introduction to Business Continuity

Start here if you're new to business continuity.

What is Business Continuity?

Flood. Cyber attack. Supply chain failure or losing a key employee. Disruptions to your business can happen at any moment.

Business continuity is about having a plan to deal with difficult situations, so your organization can continue to function with as little disruption as possible.

Whether it’s a business, public sector organization, or charity, you need to know how you can keep going under any circumstances.

Potential incidents to consider

Supply chain failure - You don't have access to materials, goods or services
Utilities outage - You don't have access to electricity, water or internet
Cyber incident - You have suffered a cyber attack and your website is down

These are just some of the many incidents an organziation needs to consider and plan for.

Make a plan

A good BC plan recognises potential threats to an organization and analyses what impact they may have on day-to-day operations.

It also provides a way to mitigate these threats, putting in place a framework which allows key functions of the business to continue even if the worst happens.

Example: Do not rely on one supplier of raw materials, what if that supplier goes out of business? If you purchase raw materials from two suppliers then you are potentially halving your risk.

The BCI has designed a short, self-paced eLearning course that will help you understand the importance of business continuity and get you starting to think about the incidents that might impact your own organization and what you can do to mitigate them. This short course takes up to 30 minutes to complete.

Business Continuity Basics course

The BCI has many other free resources available to enhance your understanding of business continuity, see a few below to start ...

What threats do organizations face.

The BCI Horizon Scan report identifies threats organziations should be aware of. Free to download.

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Download the BCI Good Practice Guidelines Lite

The BCI Good Practice Guidelines (GPG) Lite gives your a brief introduction to the Business Continuity Management Lifecycle and the stages included. It will help you put a plan together and give you insight to what is included in the full edition of the GPG and the content of the CBCI Certification course

GPG Lite Edition 7.0

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Business Continuity Planning

Organize a business continuity team and compile a business continuity plan to manage a business disruption. Learn more about how to put together and test a business continuity plan with the videos below.

Business Continuity Plan Supporting Resources

Business Continuity Plan Situation Manual
Business Continuity Plan Test Exercise Planner Instructions
Business Continuity Plan Test Facilitator and Evaluator Handbook

Business Continuity Training Videos

The Business Continuity Planning Suite is no longer supported or available for download.

Business Continuity Training Introduction

An overview of the concepts detailed within this training. Also, included is a humorous, short video that introduces viewers to the concept of business continuity planning and highlights the benefits of having a plan. Two men in an elevator experience a spectrum of disasters from a loss of power, to rain, fire, and a human threat. One man is prepared for each disaster and the other is not.

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Business Continuity Training Part 1: What is Business Continuity Planning?

An explanation of what business continuity planning means and what it entails to create a business continuity plan. This segment also incorporates an interview with a company that has successfully implemented a business continuity plan and includes a discussion about what business continuity planning means to them.

Business Continuity Training Part 2: Why is Business Continuity Planning Important?

An examination of the value a business continuity plan can bring to an organization. This segment also incorporates an interview with a company that has successfully implemented a business continuity plan and includes a discussion about how business continuity planning has been valuable to them.

Business Continuity Training Part 3: What's the Business Continuity Planning Process?

An overview of the business continuity planning process. This segment also incorporates an interview with a company about its process of successfully implementing a business continuity plan.

Business Continuity Training Part 3: Planning Process Step 1

The first of six steps addressed in this Business Continuity Training, which detail the process of building a business continuity plan. This step addresses how organizations should “prepare” to create a business continuity plan.

Business Continuity Training Part 3: Planning Process Step 2

The second of six steps addressed in this Business Continuity Training, which detail the process of building a business continuity plan. This step addresses how organizations should “define” their business continuity plan objectives.

Business Continuity Training Part 3: Planning Process Step 3

The third of six steps addressed in this Business Continuity Training, which detail the process of building a business continuity plan. This step addresses how organizations should “identify” and prioritize potential risks and impacts.

Business Continuity Training Part 3: Planning Process Step 4

The fourth of six steps addressed in this Business Continuity Training, which detail the process of building a business continuity plan. This step addresses how organizations should “develop” business continuity strategies.

Business Continuity Training Part 3: Planning Process Step 5

The fifth of six steps addressed in this Business Continuity Training, which detail the process of building a business continuity plan. This step addresses how organizations should define their “teams” and tasks.

Business Continuity Training Part 3: Planning Process Step 6

The sixth of six steps addressed in this Business Continuity Training, which detail the process of building a business continuity plan. This step addresses how organizations should “test” their business continuity plans. View on YouTube

Last Updated: 12/21/2023

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Published: 21 December 2023 Contributors: Mesh Flinders, Ian Smalley

Business continuity disaster recovery (BCDR) refers to a process that helps organizations return to normal business operations if a disaster happens. While business continuity and disaster recovery are closely related, they describe two subtly different approaches to crisis management that businesses can take.

As data loss prevention and downtime become more expensive, many organizations are upping their investment in emergency management. In 2023, companies worldwide were set to spend USD 219 billion on cybersecurity, a 12% increase from the previous year according to a recent report by the International Data Corporation (link resides outside ibm.com).

What is a disaster recovery plan?

A disaster recovery plan (DRP) is a contingency plan for how an enterprise will recover from an unexpected event. DRPs help businesses manage different disaster scenarios, such as massive outages, natural disasters, ransomware and malware attacks, and many others.

What is a business continuity plan?

Like DRPs, business continuity plans (BCPs) play a critical role in disaster recovery and help organizations return to normal business functions when a disaster happens. Where a DRP focuses specifically on IT systems, business continuity management focuses more broadly on various aspects of preparedness.

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Most organizations divide BCDR planning into two separate processes: business continuity and disaster recovery. This approach is effective because while the two processes share many steps, there are also key differences in how organizations build, implement and test the plans.

The main difference is that BCPs are proactive, aiming to maintain operations before, during and right after a disaster. On the other hand, DRPs are reactive, focusing on how to respond and recover from an incident. This distinction should guide the creation of your BCDR strategy, with BCPs focusing on critical processes and roles, and DRPs on recovery actions post-incident.

Both processes depend heavily on two critical components: recovery time objective and recovery point objective.

Recovery time objective (RTO)

RTO refers to the amount of time it takes to restore business processes after an unplanned incident. Establishing a reasonable RTO is one of the first things businesses need do when they’re creating their DRP.

Recovery point objective (RPO)

Your business’ RPO is the amount of data it can afford to lose in a disaster and still recover. Since data protection is a core capability of many modern enterprises, some constantly copy data to a remote data center to ensure continuity in case of a massive breach. Others set an RPO of a few minutes—or even hours—for them to recover business data from a backup system, so they know they are able to recover from whatever they've lost during that time.

1. Conduct business impact analysis

To build an effective BCP, you first need to understand the various risks your organization faces. Business impact analysis (BIA) is vital in risk management and business resilience. BIA is the process of identifying and evaluating the potential impact of a disaster on normal operations. Strong BIA includes an overview of all potential existing threats and vulnerabilities—internal and external—and detailed plans for mitigation. The BIA must also identify the likelihood of an event occurring so the organization can prioritize accordingly.

2. Design responses

When your BIA is complete, the next step in building your BCP is planning effective responses to each of the threats you’ve identified. Different threats naturally require different disaster recovery strategies, so each of your responses should have a detailed plan for how the organization will spot a specific threat and address it.

3. Identify key roles and responsibilities

This step dictates how key members of your team responds when facing a crisis or disruptive event. It documents expectations for each team member and also the resources required for them to fulfill their roles. This part of the process is good to consider how individuals communicate when an incident occurs. Some threats shut down key networks—such as cellular or internet connectivity—so it’s important to have reliable fallback methods of communication.

4. Test and update your plan

To be actionable, you need to constantly practice and refine your BCDR plan. Constant testing and training of employees lead to a seamless deployment when an actual disaster strikes. Rehearse realistic scenarios like cyberattacks, fires, floods, human error, massive outages and other relevant threats so team members can build confidence in their roles and responsibilities.

Like BCPs, DRPs require BIA—the outlining of roles and responsibilities and constant testing and refinement. But because DRPs are more reactive in nature, there is more of a focus on risk analysis and data backup and recovery . Steps 2 and 3 of DRP development, analyzing risks and creating an asset inventory are not part of the BCP development process at all.

Here's a widely used five-step process for creating a DRP:

1. Conduct business impact analysis

Like in your BCP process, start by assessing each threat your company might face and what its ramifications might be. Consider how potential threats might impact daily operations, regular communication channels and worker safety. Other considerations for a strong BIA include loss of revenue, cost of downtime, cost of reputational repair (public relations), loss of customers and investors (short and long term) and any incurred penalties from compliance violations.

2. Analyze risks

DRPs typically require more careful risk assessment than BCPs since their role is to focus on recovery efforts from a potential disaster. During the risk analysis portion of planning, consider a risk’s likelihood and potential impact on your business.

3. Create an asset inventory

To create an effective DRP, you must know exactly what your enterprise owns, its purpose or function and its condition. Doing regular asset inventory helps identify hardware, software, IT infrastructure and anything else your organization might own that is crucial to your business operations. When you’ve identified your assets, you can group them into three categories: critical, important and unimportant.

Critical: Only label assets as critical if your enterprise requires them for normal business operations.
Important: Give this label to assets that you use at least once a day and that would have an impact on business operations (but not shut them down entirely) if they are disrupted.
Unimportant: These are assets your business uses infrequently that are not essential for normal business operations.

4. Establish roles and responsibilities

Just like in your BCP development, you need to clearly outline responsibilities and ensure that team members have what they need to perform their required duties. Without this crucial step, no one knows how to act during a disaster. Here are some roles and responsibilities to consider when building your DRP:

Incident reporter: Someone who maintains contact information for relevant parties and communicates with business leaders and stakeholders when disruptive events occur.
DRP supervisor: The DRP supervisor ensures that team members perform their assigned tasks during an incident.
Asset manager: Someone whose job it is to secure and protect critical assets when a disaster strikes.
Third-party liaison: The person who coordinates with any third-party vendors or service providers you’ve hired as part of your DRP and updates stakeholders accordingly on how the DRP is going.

5. Test and refine

Like your BCP, your DRP requires constant practice and refinement to be effective. Practice it regularly and update it according to any meaningful changes that are necessary. For example, if your company acquires a new asset after you've formed your DRP, you’ll need to incorporate it into your plan to ensure it's protected going forward.

In terms of BCDR planning, every business is going to have its own unique set of needs. Here are a few examples of plans that are effective for companies of differing sizes and industries:

Crisis management plan

A crisis management plan, also known as an incident management plan, is a detailed plan for managing a specific incident. It provides detailed instructions on how your organization responds to a specific crisis, such as a power outage, cyberattack or natural disaster.

Communications plan

A communications plan outlines how your organization handles public relations (PR) in the event of a disaster. Business leaders typically coordinate with communications specialists to formulate communications plans that complement any crisis management activities needed to keep business operations going during an unplanned incident.

Data center recovery plan

A data center recovery plan focuses on the security of a data center facility and its ability to get back up and running after an unplanned incident. Some common threats to data storage include overstretched personnel that can result in human error, cyberattacks, power outages and difficulty following compliance requirements.

Network recovery plan

Network recovery plans help organizations recover from an interruption of network services, including internet access, cellular data, local area networks and wide area networks. Due to the critical role networked services play in business operations, network recovery plans must clearly outline the steps, roles and responsibilities needed to quickly and effectively restore services after a network compromise.

Virtualized recovery plan

A virtualized recovery plan relies on virtual machine (VM) instances that can be ready to operate within a couple of minutes of an interruption. Virtual machines are representations, or emulations, of physical computers that provide critical application recovery through high availability, or the ability of a system to operate continuously without failing.

BCDR planning helps organizations better understand the threats they face and better prepare to face them. Enterprises that don’t undertake BCDR planning face various risks, including data loss, downtime, financial penalties and reputational damage. Effective BCDR planning helps ensure business continuity and the prompt restoration of services after a business disruption. Here are some of the benefits companies with strong BCDR planning enjoy:

When an unplanned incident disrupts business as usual, it can cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Additionally, high-profile cyberattacks frequently attract unwanted attention in the press and can result in loss of confidence in both customers and investors. BCDR plans increase an organization’s ability get back up and running swiftly and smoothly after an unplanned incident.

According to IBM’s recent Cost of Data Breach Report , the average cost of a data breach in 2023 was USD 4.45 million, a 15% increase over the previous three years. Enterprises with strong BCDR can reduce those costs by helping maintain business continuity throughout an incident and speeding recovery afterward. Another opportunity for cost-savings with strong BCDR is in cyber insurance. Many insurers won’t insure organizations that haven't established a strong BCDR plan.

Data breaches incur hefty fines when private customer information is compromised. Businesses that operate in heavily regulated sectors like healthcare and personal finance face especially costly penalties. Since these penalties are often tied to the duration and severity of a breach, maintaining business continuity and shortening response and recovery lifecycles is critical to keeping financial penalties low.

Even a minor outage can put you at a competitive disadvantage. Protect your data with a cloud disaster recovery plan.

Employ a highly durable, scalable and security-rich destination for backing up your data.

Expand capacity and consolidate data center infrastructure onto an automated and centrally managed software-defined data center with IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions.

Many factors come into play when deciding whether to invest in and manage your on-premises disaster recovery (DR) solutions or use disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) providers.

Backup and restore refers to technologies and practices for making periodic copies of data and applications to a separate, secondary device and then using those copies to recover the data and applications.

There are critical similarities and differences between disaster recovery and backup. These solutions can both help you solve your business' most important problems.

IBM has plans and processes in place globally that help sustain its business by assessing potential disasters. This paper provides an overview of the business continuity measures used by IBM to help prevent or reduce the impact of potential threats.

Zerto helps clients access robust disaster recovery and data protection capabilities while using the agility and flexibility of IBM Cloud for VMware solutions shared in a single-click deployment.

IBM's business continuity and resiliency engagement is designed to help you enable resumption of your business operations quickly and maintain the quality of your existing services in the event of an outage.

IBM Cloud Backup is a full-featured, agent-based backup and recovery system managed through a web interface. Back up data between IBM Cloud servers in one or more IBM Cloud global data centers.

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7 Strategies to Maintain Business Continuity

Aaron Ricadela | Content Strategist | April 29, 2024

In This Article

What Is Business Continuity?

Seven tips to maintain business continuity, minimize downtime and interrupted services with oracle, business continuity faqs.

When a natural disaster, major IT outage, or other calamity knocks the systems employees use offline, companies need both disaster recovery technology and a sound business continuity strategy. A solid plan accounts for potential threats—including natural disasters, cyberattacks, and local and widespread outages—and lays out how the organization will respond to each.

Business continuity plans typically include instructions for keeping communication lines open, protecting data, and making sure employees are safe and as productive as possible. A sound plan will minimize downtime, financial losses, and reputational damage and maximize the speed with which normal operations are resumed.

Business continuity refers to the plans, processes, and procedures an organization puts in place to ensure that essential functions continue during and after a disaster or unexpected event. Key components of a business continuity plan include risk assessments, emergency response procedures, communication plans, backup and recovery strategies, instructions on how to train staff on their responsibilities, and a schedule for updating and testing protocols.

Risk assessments should include disruptive events, such as natural disasters, wars, acts of terrorism, heat waves, and floods, as well as IT failures caused by software bugs, human errors, and cyberattacks—anything that could derail your normal business operations and lead to financial losses. A strategy for responding to and coping with these events starts with a business impact analysis that rates the likelihood of each potential threat and the possible resultant damage.

Successful business continuity plans depend on a mixture of technology investments, sound processes, and training that walks employees through crucial steps before disaster strikes. Here are some strategies for building the needed technology infrastructure, preparing staff, and keeping external stakeholders informed.

One key: Cloud technologies, including hybrid IT architectures, can lower the cost of the disaster recovery piece of business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) by helping departments restart systems faster.

1. Train team members.

Research has shown that business continuity plans benefit from having visible executive sponsors. Companies also need to update and train team members regularly on their responsibilities. Stakeholders can benefit from tabletop testing, where they verbally run through steps in a conference room or a physical walk-through of the actions they’d take during a disaster.

2. Embrace automation.

Automation can support business continuity by helping to put select processes on “autopilot,” reducing the potential for human error or information overload to cause an outage. As an example, consider automated data backups to the cloud , whereby important files are continuously saved and stored securely in multiple locations that are accessible from anywhere an employee has internet access. Another example is an automated monitoring system that can spot indications of an attempted data breach and stop it before data is lost.

3. Invest in IT.

IT teams that help their companies excel at business continuity design with resilience in mind. What that entails depends on the organization’s risk profile, but it generally involves building in redundancy in communications, staffing, data protection, and physical infrastructure. The cloud can help. For each essential service, ask: How can we provide continuous access both on-location and offsite with minimal interruption?

4. Move to the cloud.

A key aspect of business continuity is the ability to recover from outages that interrupt manufacturing, sales, transportation, and other operations. Cloud computing and newer application development approaches designed for the internet are changing how companies develop business continuity strategies. Instead of doubling or tripling IT budgets for redundant on-premises systems that need extra licenses, servers, storage, networking, and cooling, cloud services let businesses deploy crucial applications in multiple cloud data centers in different cloud regions. The apps can scale up resources in response to increased demand.

5. Prioritize reporting.

Business continuity planning relies on businesses providing timely updates that internal staff and external partners and regulators can depend on. Different communication styles and data could be necessary, depending on whether the recipients are executives, staff, customers, business partners, shareholders, or regulators.

6. Audit your business continuity plan.

It’s paramount that your plan aligns with your organization’s goals and with industry standards and key benchmarks, including state, national, and international requirements. Audits are particularly relevant for highly regulated industries, including financial services, healthcare, and utilities. Companies need to review their risk assessments, impact analyses, and recovery plans to make sure they meet the latest standards, for example, FEMA’s Federal Continuity Directive for federal organizations and the international ISO 22301 standard for business continuity management systems, and add testing and training where needed. Consider professional certifications in the field of business continuity and disaster recovery, such as those offered by Disaster Recovery Institute International (DRI) .

7. Communicate clearly.

Even the best-laid plans are no help if the people who need to execute them aren’t informed and equipped with the right tools. Department leaders, business continuity teams, and human resources departments can help communicate the importance of knowing what to do until normal operations resume. Businesses may create communication plans for the whole company and for individual departments whose work would be affected by a disaster.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) can help organizations guard against disaster-related computing downtime. Oracle separates its global cloud regions, which serve different geographic areas, into isolated, fault-tolerant availability domains, each with its own power and cooling. That means a failure in one domain is highly unlikely to stop computing work happening in another. Oracle Cloud technologies let IT departments add server resources to applications remotely and deploy their critical applications to multiple cloud regions.

Business continuity is especially important as IT systems become increasingly interdependent and more transactions are done online. An outage at one company can have a ripple effect on others. Business leaders need to determine which of their processes and associated software are mission-critical, rank others in tiers, and budget for recovery plans accordingly.

A distributed cloud provides the flexibility to choose where and how services are delivered to meet your needs—including BCDR. See why Oracle has been named a Leader in the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure. Get the free report now.

How do organizations manage business continuity?

Business leaders generally start their business continuity planning by deputizing key members of IT, operations, HR, and other departments to catalog potential disasters that could disrupt work. They prioritize processes that their organizations can’t afford to go without and draw up detailed plans and personnel assignments for actions during a calamity and recovery afterward. Companies that effectively manage business continuity ensure staff are trained and plans are rehearsed.

What are examples of business continuity?

Examples of business continuity are strategies that enable organizations to minimize disruptions and continue functioning even in the face of unexpected events. Business continuity strategies include having a crisis communication plan in place to keep stakeholders informed during an emergency and having remote work capabilities to ensure employees can work from anywhere.

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My Organization’s Business Continuity Program is Built… Now What?

Written by: Aidan Hallerman & Daniel J. Poucher

Key Takeaways:

Building out your BCP is not the end of the line – but it is a great first step.
A crisis management structure is key to a successful BCP.
Establish roles, responsibilities, and communication channels with an Incident Management structure.
Continue to adjust based on results and risk assessments.
Continued training and awareness are key to success.

Ensuring your organization possesses a proper, well-rounded Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a great first step to ensuring structural and operational resilience in the face of varied threats – but what happens after the program is built? Establishing and maintaining a BCP is not enough to ensure stability during unforeseen disruptions; the real test lies in the continuous improvement of the plan and its subcomponents. Once a program is assembled, there are multiple channels of internal quarterly and role-based training, testing, as well as annual maintenance that can strengthen the contents of an organization’s BCP. These additional processes assist in increasing the efficacy of the plan overall, year over year.

Crisis Management Structure & Internal Plan Communication

A core tenet within a BCP should be response information to individual events or information that will collaborate to cover the full severity of a multi-stage incident. The development of Individualized Response Plans (IRPs) and Emergency Operation Plans (EOPs) are two such examples; separate documents that have their separate merits but can be combined to combat complex threats.

Organizations should create a formalized crisis management structure between multiple plans as a means of content communication. A separate plan or policy is not required, but it is important that different plans speak to one another at appropriate times of response, recovery, and restoration. Areas in need of enhancement can be found in examining not only the quality of a given plan – whether it is thorough enough to cover the topic it has been created for – but also whether it corresponds well with the other components of the overall BCP.

Develop an Incident Management Structure

Defining a structured Incident Management (IM) process should ensure what has been documented by the BCP for recovery pathways is implemented when facing true incidents. IM ensures that current documentation remains reflective and actionable for how and when a response will occur, as well as ensuring there is proper tracking of items, personnel responsibilities, communications, impacts, and executive level decisions.

Organizations should focus not only the content of a given BCP, but the chain of command that is listed within the plan’s established team’s responsibilities and roles. Designating clear and appropriate roles for organization’s employees will only assist in the effectiveness and speed of a plan’s recovery efforts. Even with the best on-paper response in place, a BCP is only as efficient as those in charge of following its contents.

Establishing set communication channels, creating collaboration opportunities by means of cross-training, and ensuring individuals are conscious of their responsibilities each assist in the formation of a more agile and responsible incident management team.

The total body of a given organization will benefit from exercising the formal IM process, via tabletop and disaster recovery testing, to be best equipped for fast paced decision-making during periods of crisis.

Incident Management

When an incident implicates the possible activation of the BCP and its teams, referencing defined escalation thresholds will be key. Escalation thresholds to any disaster will determine and ensure proper resources are deployed during a disaster; they should be based on objective criteria, such as the scope of impact, resource availability, and overall situational context.

A trigger point could be a sustained disruption that exceeds a predetermined duration, or a sudden increase in the number of stakeholders as an event moves forward in length of duration. Conversely, this ongoing adjustment process can be applied to the end of an incident; trigger points for de-escalation might include successful containment of an incident, or a significant reduction of its impact on the organization.

Overall, organizations would be most prudent in making sure any BCP escalation chain takes a tiered approach. A layered structure that takes personnel in a measured manner from routine operations to crisis management enables the organization to respond in a fashion that matches the information at the time of the incident, and provides an available set of ‘next steps’ with parameters and quantifiable means of alarm.

Regularly adjusting escalation thresholds based on lessons learned from previous incidents is also a crucial indicator of where edits can be made to the BCP. Incorporating feedback from post-incident evaluations and documentation will enhance the organization’s recovery timeline. Questions during an incident of when to report and when to incorporate outside assistance are eased by set demarcations of procedural, streamlined processes. A dynamic approach to escalation thresholds – one that accounts for the need to continuously tinker for proper calibration – ensures the organization remains agile and prepared.

Adjustments Based on Risk Assessment Results

As part of ongoing resilience efforts, organizations must conduct regular risk assessments to identify potential threats and vulnerabilities. These assessments provide valuable insights into emerging risks and help prioritize mitigation efforts. Upon analyzing risk assessment results, organizations should adjust their BCP to reflect changes. This may involve reallocating resources to address high-risk areas, updating response procedures to mitigate specific threats, or enhancing control environments to reduce the likelihood of disruptions. By strengthening control environments and implementing proactive measures, organizations can effectively move high or moderate-risk threats to lower levels, thereby minimizing their impact on business operations. Adjustments based on results ensure that the BCP remains aligned with current risk profiles and enables the organization to adapt to evolving threats with the most advantageous form of resilience.

Continued Training & Awareness

Continued training and awareness initiatives, such as role-based tabletop exercises, are essential for fostering employee preparedness and understanding within the Business Continuity Plan (BCP). Through these exercises, employees gain practical experience and insight into their specific roles and responsibilities during disruptions, allowing them to grasp their “individual piece of the puzzle” within the broader organizational response. This targeted training approach not only enhances individual readiness, but also promotes a cohesive and coordinated response across all levels of the organization.

By refining individualized plans, streamlining incident management structures, establishing clear escalation thresholds, documenting information comprehensively, adjusting content based on risk assessment results, and fostering continued training, organizations can make themselves as ready as possible for a business disruption. Through these combined, continually maintained efforts, organizations can empower their teams to understand their roles, adapt to threats, and contribute to a multi-layered response.

If your organization needs assistance with plan creation, testing, tabletop exercises, or any other part of the BCP process, reach out to our experts at Wolf today.

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Business Continuity Plan

Ever wondered how businesses survive significant disruptions like natural disasters, cyber-attacks, or other emergencies? Enter the Business Continuity Plan (BCP) – a proactive blueprint designed to ensure that your business keeps running smoothly. This guide will walk you through the ins and outs of a BCP, from its essential features, various types, and the significant benefits it offers. Comprehending the importance of BCP will ensure that you are prepared to tackle difficult times head-on, safeguarding your assets, employees, and reputation. So buckle up, as we dive deep into the world of Business Continuity Plans.

What is a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)?

A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a strategic blueprint that organisations prepare to ensure continuous operation during and after an emergency or significant disruption. This practical plan emphasises preparedness and outlines how a company will operate under adverse conditions, ensuring that critical functions and processes remain operational. The primary goal of a BCP is to mitigate the impact on company operations, assets, and employees, safeguarding both the short-term and long-term interests of the business.

A well-structured BCP addresses risks such as natural disasters, cyber-attacks, and other unforeseen events that could potentially halt business operations. By planning in advance, businesses can reduce downtime and speed up the recovery process, ultimately protecting their market share, reputation, and stakeholder trust. An effective BCP should align closely with a business plan, detailing how operational sustainability will be achieved.

Why is a Business Continuity Plan important?

Prompt recovery: Ensures quick restoration of services, reducing potential revenue loss.
Risk management: Helps identify and mitigate risks, ensuring the business can handle unexpected disruptions.
Customer trust: Maintains service delivery during disruptions, sustaining customer confidence and loyalty.
Regulatory compliance: Meets legal and regulatory requirements for operational resilience.
Employee safety: Prioritises safety, reassuring and retaining employees during crises.

Types of business continuity

Operational: Focuses on maintaining essential operational capabilities through alternative processes or locations.
Technological: Ensures critical IT systems and data are protected and can be quickly restored.
Economic: Addresses financial stability by managing cash flow and financial obligations during disruptions.
Workforce: Plans for human resources continuity, including remote work and cross-training.
Safety: Prioritises physical and health safety measures to protect employees and assets.
Environmental: Considers the impact of environmental threats and plans for sustainable operation.
Security: Protects physical and information assets from security breaches or physical threats.
Reputation: Maintains a positive public image and manages communications during a crisis.

Benefits of a Business Continuity Plan

Having a robust business continuity plan is critical to your business. Here are some of the benefits of a Business Continuity Plan:

Minimised downtime: Reduces the operational downtime during disruptions.
Financial protection: Prevents significant financial losses linked to halted operations.
Stakeholder confidence: Enhances confidence among investors, customers, and partners.
Enhanced compliance: Helps in meeting industry standards and regulatory requirements.
Improved risk management: Strengthens the organisation's ability to manage and mitigate risks.

Key features of an effective Business Continuity Plan

Some of the key features of effective Business Continuity Plans are:

Comprehensive risk assessment: Identifies all potential threats to operations.
Clear communication channels: Establishes predefined ways to communicate during a crisis.
Regular testing and updates: Ensures that the plan remains effective and applicable over time.
Employee training: Prepares employees through drills and training sessions.
Flexible strategies: Incorporates flexible strategies to handle various types of disruptions.

Business continuity management

Some of the best practices for implementing business continuity management have been outlined below:

Plan development: Creating a structured approach to manage disruptions.
Leadership involvement: Ensuring top management's direct involvement and support.
Integration with business processes: Embedding continuity practices in daily operations.
Monitoring and review: Continuously evaluating the plan’s effectiveness against set benchmarks.
Stakeholder engagement: Keeping all stakeholders informed and involved in the continuity processes.

How to create a Business Continuity Plan

When creating a Business Continuity Plan, some essential things to keep in mind are:

Identify critical functions: Pinpointing essential services and processes.
Conduct a business impact analysis: Determining the effects of disruption on business operations.
Develop recovery strategies: Outlining steps to restore business functions promptly.
Implement the plan: Establishing procedures and resources necessary for the plan.
Test and improve: Regularly testing the plan to find and rectify shortcomings.

Business continuity impact analysis

An important way to assess the impact of your Business Continuity Plan is to periodically analyse it. Here are some areas that you should keep in mind when assessing the impact of your business continuity management plan:

Identify key business areas: Focusing on crucial business segments.
Evaluate Financial Impact: Assessing the financial implications of disruptions.
Determine operational impact: Understanding the effects on business operations.
Consider legal/regulatory repercussions: Compliance impacts of operational downtime.
Prioritise recovery time: Setting timelines for restoring critical functions.

Business Continuity Plan vs. Disaster Recovery Plan

Purpose difference: BCP is broader, ensuring overall continuity; DRP focuses specifically on IT and data recovery.
Scope of planning: BCP covers all aspects of the organisation; DRP is mainly about technological restoration.
Response time: BCP aims for immediate action; DRP may have longer recovery times.
Resource allocation: BCP involves comprehensive resource management; DRP primarily allocates IT resources.
Employee involvement: BCP requires organisation-wide participation; DRP is typically IT department-centric.

A Business Continuity Plan is not just a regulatory formality but a critical strategic asset that safeguards an organisation's operational integrity, reputation, and financial stability during crises. It supports seamless business operations, ensuring that even in the face of disruptions, a company can maintain its service delivery and stakeholder trust. Additionally, it empowers businesses to adapt to new challenges swiftly, turning potential obstacles into opportunities for growth and innovation. By systematically evaluating and updating their continuity strategies, companies can stay ahead of emerging threats and ensure long-term resilience. A well-prepared Business Continuity Plan not only enhances a company's ability to quickly recover from disruptions but also strengthens its eligibility and terms for business loans, as lenders often favour businesses that demonstrate robust risk management strategies.

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Incident Response Plan vs Disaster Recovery Plan: 4 Differences

May 1, 2024

Incident Response Plan and Disaster Recovery

In the realm of cybersecurity and business continuity, two crucial strategies often come into play: incident response plans (IRP) and disaster recovery plans (DRP). While both are vital components of an organization’s resilience against disruptions, they serve distinct purposes and operate on different timelines. Understanding the disparities between the two is fundamental for effective risk management and mitigation.

What is an Incident Response Plan?

An incident response plan (IRP) outlines the procedures and protocols an organization follows when responding to cybersecurity incidents or other disruptive events. These incidents can range from data breaches and malware infections to natural disasters or physical security breaches. The primary goal of an IRP is to minimize the impact of the incident, swiftly contain it, eradicate the threat, and restore normal operations as efficiently as possible.

An effective IRP typically includes predefined roles and responsibilities for key personnel, a clear escalation process, guidelines for communication both internally and externally, steps for evidence preservation and forensic analysis, and procedures for reporting and documenting the incident.

What is a Disaster Recovery Plan?

A disaster recovery plan ( DRP ), on the other hand, focuses on the restoration of critical business functions and IT infrastructure following a major disruptive event. These events can include natural disasters like earthquakes or floods, large-scale cyberattacks causing widespread system outages, or infrastructure failures such as power outages or hardware malfunctions.

Unlike an IRP, which deals with immediate response and containment, a DRP is concerned with the recovery and continuity of operations over a longer time frame. It outlines strategies for data backup and restoration, alternative work environments, resource allocation, and the prioritization of critical systems and processes.

A robust DRP aims to minimize downtime, mitigate financial losses, and ensure the organization can resume operations as quickly as possible following a disaster, thus maintaining customer confidence and preserving the organization’s reputation.

How is an Incident Response Plan Similar to Disaster Recovery?

While incident response plans and disaster recovery plans serve distinct purposes, they also share several similarities:

Both Focus on Business Continuity

Both IRPs and DRPs are essential components of an organization’s business continuity strategy . They aim to minimize disruptions, protect assets, and ensure the continuity of operations in the face of adverse events.

Both Involve Preparedness and Planning

Effective incident response and disaster recovery require thorough preparation and planning. Both plans involve identifying potential risks, assessing vulnerabilities , establishing protocols, and training personnel to respond swiftly and effectively to incidents or disasters.

Both Require Clear Communication

Communication is critical during both incident response and disaster recovery efforts. Clear lines of communication must be established both internally among team members and externally with stakeholders, partners, and customers to ensure transparency and coordinate response efforts.

Both Emphasize Continuous Improvement

Continuous improvement is integral to both IRPs and DRPs. Regular testing, evaluation, and updates are necessary to ensure the plans remain effective and relevant in an ever-evolving threat landscape.

4 Key Differences Between an Incident Response Plan vs Disaster Recovery Plan

Scope and time frame.

IRP: Addresses immediate response and containment of security incidents or disruptions. It focuses on short-term actions to mitigate the impact and restore normal operations promptly.

DRP: Deals with the recovery and restoration of critical business functions and IT infrastructure following a major disruptive event. It operates on a longer timeframe, focusing on medium to long-term recovery efforts.

IRP: Aims to minimize the impact of security incidents, contain the threat, and restore normal operations swiftly while preserving evidence for investigation and remediation.

DRP: Aims to minimize downtime, recover data and systems, and restore critical business functions to ensure continuity of operations and minimize financial losses.

IRP: Primarily focuses on cybersecurity incidents and other disruptive events that threaten the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of data and systems.

DRP: Focuses on broader disaster scenarios, including natural disasters, cyberattacks, infrastructure failures, and other events that can cause widespread disruption to operations.

IRP: Execution is typically rapid and dynamic, involving real-time response actions to contain and mitigate the impact of the incident.

DRP: Execution is more methodical and structured, involving predefined steps and procedures for data recovery, system restoration, and business continuity.

Expert Incident Management with Cynergy Technology

As a leading provider of network security solutions, Cynergy Technology can support your organization with incident management. Our Managed Services monitor the overall health of your infrastructure resources and handle the daily activities of investigating and resolving incidents. Whether you need an incident response plan, disaster recovery plan, or both, our team of experts can partner with your business to tailor-fit the right solution for your unique needs. With over forty-two years of experience, Cynergy leverages innovative tooling and automation to boost your organization’s efficiency, reduce operational overhead and risk, and keep your business running smoothly. Contact our team of experts today for a free consultation !

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Understanding Business Continuity vs BDR: A Guide
About Invenio IT
Business Continuity

23 Business Continuity Statistics You Need to Know

Dale Shulmistra

July 14, 2023

Today’s business continuity statistics reveal that small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) have gotten better about embracing business continuity planning over the last few decades. Particularly following the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the ever-increasing reliance on business data, organizations have implemented stronger technologies and protocols to limit interruptions from unexpected disasters.

However, statistics suggest many organizations still face costly disruptions, due to a wide range of threats. And the year 2020 added an entirely new challenge as the COVID-19 pandemic threw many businesses into turmoil, forcing many to restructure their operations overnight, just to maintain continuity.

Here’s a breakdown of the most telling stats on business continuity and disaster recovery today.

1. A break in continuity can cost $10,000/hour at minimum

Even the smallest businesses heavily rely on data and connectivity. As a result, IT disruptions have become more expensive than ever. According to figures from Datto, just one hour of downtime can cost $10,000 for small businesses. For larger companies, those hourly costs can balloon to more than $5 million.

A break in continuity for even just a few hours can prove to be disastrous for small businesses. When big disruptions occur, such as fires, natural disasters and major cybersecurity events, it can be devastating for a business, creating conditions that make survival even more challenging. (Source: Datto)

2. 1 in 2 businesses have experienced an extended break in continuity

Unexpected disruptions are extremely common – they happen every day, at businesses of all sizes. In a survey highlighted by DataCore, 54% of businesses said they had experienced a downtime incident in the past five years that lasted at least eight hours. (Source: DataCore)

3. 9 in 10 small companies permanently close if they are slow to reopen

A break in continuity isn’t just costly. It can literally end a business if operations can’t be restarted quickly enough.

Data from FEMA shows that 90% of businesses fail within a year if they are unable to get back up and running within 5 days after a disaster. The longer recovery takes, the more likely a business will have to permanently shutter its doors. (Source: FEMA)

4. 28% of breaches affect small businesses

One of the most common causes of continuity interruptions is data breaches by outside attackers. And, it’s important to remember that these threat actors don’t just target the big guys. Many of them aim to intentionally disrupt SMBs, which tend to have weaker cybersecurity.

In 2020, 28% of breaches affected small businesses, according to data from Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report. Most breaches were linked to attacks on web applications (roughly 43%). Also, not surprisingly, 83% of these attacks were financially motivated. (Source: Verizon)

5. 100,000 small businesses were forced to close permanently during COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic presented one of the most challenging continuity challenges in living memory. Among the most shocking business continuity statistics: 100,000 small businesses in the U.S. were forced to close due to the pandemic.

While the pandemic is a type of disruption that no one could have predicted, it does underscore a fundamental requirement of all disaster recovery planning: expect the unexpected . While some types of businesses did their best to adapt, many were not prepared or had no other viable options. (Source: Washington Post )

6. 51% of companies don’t have a business continuity plan

A 2020 survey found that 51% of companies across the globe don’t have a business continuity plan. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated just how vulnerable a large percentage of businesses were, and a report by the Economic Times underscores the value of having a business continuity plan. This type of plan is a proven method for businesses to recover from disaster by outlining the critical steps and systems needed to maintain continuity. (Source: Mercer via Economic Times)

7. External threat actors make up 83% of threats

Statistics for 2023 found that 83% of attacks on businesses were perpetrated by external actors. That’s scary enough, but what’s perhaps more frightening is this means the other 17% are perpetrated by internal personnel or third parties that have authorized access to systems. All businesses should remember to factor in internal threats when creating their cybersecurity protocols and BCPs. (Source: Verizon)

8. 75% of companies have suffered supply chain disruption

A survey conducted in March 2020 found that 75% of companies suffered a supply disruption in the early days of the pandemic. Furthermore, an October survey found 90% of businesses, across all industries, believe the disruption of global supply chains will have long-lasting impacts on their businesses.

Today’s businesses are highly connected and interdependent on one another. Whether it’s a pandemic, a ransomware attack or an electrical grid failure (e.g. the state of Texas’s February 2021 disruption due to lack of planning for cold weather events), businesses need to be prepared for continuity when reliant upon other businesses for transportation, supplies or technologies they need. (Sources: Supply and Demand Chain Executive and Interos)

9. 33% of network folders are not protected at all

Sometimes, all it takes is one compromised folder—or even a single file—to cause a break in continuity. And the latest business continuity statistics suggest that businesses are not being careful enough with their file restrictions.

A recent survey found that approximately 33% of all folders used by a company are open to everyone. Worse yet, the survey found that nearly two-thirds of companies have more than 1,000 sensitive files open to every user on the network. This lack of security is a disaster waiting to happen. Folder access should be configured on an “as needed” basis (i.e. the principle of “least privilege”). Not everyone in an organization needs the same access and permissions. Being too liberal with access control significantly increases the risk that a user will accidentally (or maliciously) create, edit, update or delete business-critical data. (Source: Varonis).

10. 45% of data breaches involve hacking

Data breaches are a problem that nearly all organizations face, and 45% of them suffer a breach due to successfully being hacked . Businesses that don’t plan or put due diligence into protecting sensitive data could suffer massive losses. In industries such as healthcare and financial services, which face stringent data regulations like HIPAA , organizations can also face steep fines and penalties. (Source: Verizon via Comparitech)

11. Majority of small businesses use or will use a cloud storage solution

SMBs continue to adopt cloud technology in various ways to support their business continuity objectives. According to the latest business continuity statistics, 84% of businesses currently store data and backups in the cloud, and an additional 8% plan to do so within the next year. (Source: Comparitech)

12. About 1% of hard drives failed in 2020

Hard drives can and do fail. And when they do, they can cause a massive operational disruption. In 2020, the average rate of hard drive failure was 0.93% (pretty consistent with 2019 failure rates which were 0.92%). This might not sound like a lot, but to a small business that relies heavily on its hard drives, just one crash could be disastrous. SMBs need to include data backup planning in their business continuity plans, as well as hardware replacement schedules, which prevent the risk of sudden drive failure and data loss. (Source: BackBlaze)

13. 45% experience downtime from hardware failure

This statistic underscores just how disruptive hardware failure can be for a business. And it’s not limited to just hard drives. Servers, network devices and other components are all at risk of failing unexpectedly. When this happens, it can bring your most critical operations to a screeching halt. (Source: Veritis)

14. Ransomware attacks cause 16.2 days of downtime

Ransomware has become one of the leading causes of operational downtime, affecting 1 in 5 small businesses, according to Datto. Companies that faced attacks suffered, on average, 16.2 days of downtime, according to ZDNet, and the costs associated with this downtime are increasing at an alarming rate. Also worrisome is the fact that cybercriminals essentially doubled the amount of ransom they asked for last year over the previous year.

As with most disaster scenarios, data backup remains the single greatest protection against ransomware, as it allows businesses to quickly recover lost data and restore systems back to their pre-infected state. (Source: ZDNet)

15. 1 in 3 organizations have been infected by malware

Malware in general is a persistent and ongoing problem that causes significant disruption for businesses. And it only continues to get worse as threat actors find new ways to exploit businesses for profit. Roughly a third of businesses have been infected with malware, corrupting data, crashing applications, bricking servers or causing other disruptions. (Source: DataCore)

16. 37% of SMBs have lost data in the cloud

Earlier in this post, we noted that the majority of SMBs are utilizing the cloud and, overall, this is a good thing. However, it doesn’t mean it completely solves the business continuity issues associated with cloud use. Thirty-seven percent of SMBs have reported losing data in the cloud, a statistic that highlights the need for cloud backup solutions like Datto SaaS Protection , in conjunction with traditional BC/DR systems. (Source: Backupify)

17. 1 in 6 SMB executives don’t know their own recovery objectives

A survey by Infrascale conducted in 2020 found that one-sixth of SMB executives don’t know their own recovery time objectives (RTOs). Furthermore, 24% of those surveyed expect their data to be recovered in under 10 minutes after a disaster. One-third (29%) said they expect recovery within an hour, and 17% said one day.

Not surprisingly, these estimates often do not align with the actual recovery timelines that are possible with their implemented IT systems. Typically, the less insight that executives have about those systems, the greater the gap between their recovery estimates and the realistic outcomes. (Source: Infrascale via Small Business Trends)

18. 1 in 5 SMB executives doesn’t have a recovery plan

In the same study that reported statistics for #17, findings also indicated 1 in 5 of the SMB executives surveyed doesn’t have a recovery plan in place. Of those surveyed, 31% said they don’t have the right resources or budget. (Source: Infrascale)

19. Small businesses close at a much higher rate than large companies

A 2022 paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that smaller businesses are forced to close at a significantly higher rate than larger organizations, particularly “when facing a large aggregate negative shock such as a health crisis.” This was true prior to COVID-19, but it was exacerbated further by the pandemic. During Q2 of 2020, for example, large businesses experienced an increase in permanent closure rates of 1.3 percentage points specifically due to COVID-19. Meanwhile, the rate of increase was more than twice as high for small businesses: 3.3 percentage points. (Source: National Bureau of Economic Research)

20. 40% of IT decision-makers are increasing cybersecurity spending

A 2023 report by Datto revealed that businesses are actively increasing their cybersecurity spending in response to growing threats like ransomware. In a survey of nearly 2,913 IT decision-makers for SMBs, 40% said that their organizations are boosting their cybersecurity budget in the year ahead. In contrast, only 6% said they were decreasing their spending. (Source: Datto)

21. Phishing emails were the biggest concern in 2023

37% of IT managers reported said that phishing emails were a top threat to business continuity, according to Datto’s 2023 cybersecurity report. Collectively, it was the top concern among the nearly 3,000 IT managers surveyed, followed by malicious websites/ads (27%), weak passwords/access management (24%) and poor user practices (24%). The results are not surprising when you consider that phishing emails can get past even the strongest cybersecurity safeguards with user deception alone. (Source: Datto)

22. 74% of data breaches involved the human element

A 2023 analysis of 5,199 data breaches revealed that nearly 3 in 4 breaches involved the human element, such as social engineering attacks or human error. This is yet another business continuity statistic that explains why IT managers are so concerned about the threat of phishing emails and other user deception. (Source: Verizon)

23. 1 in 5 businesses fails within their first year

Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows that about 20% of U.S. businesses close within their first year of operations. While this figure represents closures from all causes, it underscores the challenges that small businesses face, particularly in their first year. New businesses are especially vulnerable to the financial losses that can occur from a break in continuity.

Interestingly, the rate of failure for new businesses varies significantly by state and location. In the District of Columbia, 28% of businesses fail in their first year – the highest in the nation. In contrast, only 13% of businesses in California fail in their first year. (Source: BLS via LendingTree)

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. what are the statistics for backup and recovery.

Globally, about 91% of organizations use some form of data backup, according to Statista. Research by Acronis found that 72% of IT users were forced to recover lost data from a backup at least once within the previous year. 33% said they had to restore a backup multiple times.

2. How many businesses have a business continuity plan?

An estimated 49% of businesses globally have a business continuity plan, according to a survey conducted by Mercer. This translates to approximately 163 million companies that have a BCP, compared to about 171 million that do not.

3. How often should a BCP be reviewed?

A business continuity plan should be reviewed at least once a year to ensure that the information within the plan is still accurate and up to date. It is also good practice to review the BCP whenever there are significant changes to the business’s operations, systems or processes.

4. What are the three branches of business continuity?

Business continuity consists of three primary branches of planning: 1) Disaster prevention, 2) Response and 3) Recovery. Together, these three branches help businesses better understand their risks for operation disruptions and the steps to minimize them.

5. How many businesses close each year?

Nearly 600,000 businesses in the United States close each year, according to statistics from chamberofcommerce.org. This figure represents closures due to numerous factors, including general business failure, lack of profitability, natural disasters, cyberattacks, owner retirement and so on.

The most recent business continuity statistics show a troubling ongoing trend. Threats like ransomware and other cyberattacks continue to disrupt operations for organizations in every industry. At the same time, these disruptions are becoming costlier and taking longer to resolve. Small to mid-sized businesses are especially vulnerable, because they typically have fewer resources to recover from an extended outage. All of this underscores the importance of implementing a strong business continuity plan, as well as dependable BC/DR technologies that can prevent costly disruptions from data loss.

Don’t let your business become another statistic

To learn more about deploying robust data backup and other business continuity technologies, contact our experts at Invenio IT. Request a free demo , call (646) 395-1170 or email us at [email protected]

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Ensuring Business Continuity: High Availability and Disaster Recovery Planning for Odoo Hosting

I n today's fast-paced corporate environment, when every second counts, it is vital to ensure that critical systems operate continuously. Companies that rely on Cloudpepper Odoo hosting for business processes must have a strong High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR) plan in place to reduce downtime and protect against unanticipated interruptions.

Considering high Availability:

High Availability means a system can keep working and stay reachable even if there are problems with the hardware, software, or regular maintenance. For Odoo hosting, it means making sure the application is always ready for users.

To set up High Availability for Odoo, we need backup systems, a way to balance the workload, and a method for quick recovery. Backup systems ensure that if one part fails, another can step in without any interruptions. Workload balancing makes sure the incoming traffic is shared among different servers, making things work better and preventing one server from getting too busy.

Key Elements of Disaster Recovery for Odoo:

Backups: Regular backups of Odoo data and customizations are required. This guarantees that in the case of a disaster, data may be recovered to a point close to when it failed.
Offsite Data Storage: Store backups remotely to guard against on-site disasters, often using cloud storage for safety.
Documentation: Comprehensive plan documentation includes recovery steps, key staff contacts, and Odoo service restoration instructions.
Testing and Exercises: Regularly test the disaster recovery plan to identify concerns, allowing modifications before a crisis occurs.

Version Control and Configuration Management:

Version control and configuration management are critical for ensuring consistency and repeatability across several settings. Organizations that use version control systems for Odoo setups and customizations may trace changes, roll back to earlier states as needed, and preserve a reliable history of alterations.

Configuration management technologies guarantee that the infrastructure supporting Odoo stays constant across many servers, lowering the possibility of mistakes and allowing for a smoother disaster recovery procedure.

Redundant Network Connectivity:

In a High Availability environment, network redundancy is just as important as server redundancy. Having several network channels and connections reduces network disruptions and improves the overall stability of the Cloudpepper Odoo hosting environment.

Redundant network lines, routers, and switches guarantee that if one path fails, traffic may be easily diverted through another, ensuring that consumers have ongoing connectivity. This redundancy applies to both internal networks and external connections, protecting against network failures that might affect Odoo accessibility.

Pairing HA and DR to Provide Comprehensive Protection:

While High Availability focuses on ensuring ongoing operation, Disaster Recovery is designed to recover from significant events. Combining the two techniques results in a complete strategy for maintaining company continuity

In the tough business world, if systems go down, companies can lose money and damage their reputation. Having a good plan for Odoo hosting is not just a technical thing but also a smart strategy. Companies that do this well can protect their operations and data and be ready for any challenges.

Ensuring Business Continuity: High Availability and Disaster Recovery Planning for Odoo Hosting

IMAGES

7 Stages of a Business Continuity Plan
Building a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)
What is business continuity plan (BCP)?
Business Continuity Plan in Times of Crisis
Business Continuity Plans
7 Free Business Continuity Plan Templates

VIDEO

NIS2 Business Continuity Plan
Business Continuity Plan
Business Continuity Planning BCP
How to create an effective business continuity plan
Module 11
How to create an effective business continuity plan

COMMENTS

What Is a Business Continuity Plan (BCP), and How Does It Work?
Business Continuity Planning - BCP: The business continuity planning (BCP) is the creation of a strategy through the recognition of threats and risks facing a company, with an eye to ensure that ...
What is business continuity and why is it important?
Business continuity plans should be adaptable. One method of instituting a business continuity plan is to perform a risk assessment of an organization's processes and then build a response plan for each instance of a risk. This can help the organization identify potential risks to the business and prepare for unexpected challenges, ensuring it's adaptable in the event of a disaster.
What Is A Business Continuity Plan? [+ Template & Examples]
A business continuity plan outlines directions and procedures that your company will follow when faced with a crisis. These plans include business procedures, names of assets and partners, human resource functions, and other helpful information that can help maintain your brand's relationships with relevant stakeholders.
What is a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)?
A business continuity plan (BCP) is a document that consists of the critical information an organization needs to continue operating during an unplanned event. The BCP states the essential functions of the business, identifies which systems and processes must be sustained, and details how to maintain them.
All about Business Continuity Planning
A business continuity plan includes guidelines and procedures to guide a business through disruption. The efforts to create a plan are the same for large or small organizations. A simple plan is better than no plan. The basic steps for writing a business continuity plan are as follows: Create a governance team.
Business continuity planning
Business continuity planning life cycle. Business continuity may be defined as "the capability of an organization to continue the delivery of products or services at pre-defined acceptable levels following a disruptive incident", and business continuity planning (or business continuity and resiliency planning) is the process of creating systems of prevention and recovery to deal with potential ...
How to create an effective business continuity plan
A business continuity plan (BCP) is a strategic playbook created to help an organization maintain or quickly resume business functions in the face of disruption, whether that disruption is caused ...
What Is Business Continuity?
A business continuity strategy is a summary of the mitigation, crisis, and recovery plans to be implemented after a disruption to resume normal operations. "Business continuity strategy" is often used interchangeably with "business continuity plan." Both consider the broader goals, legal and regulatory requirements, personnel, and even the ...
Understanding the Essentials of a Business Continuity Plan
A business continuity plan is a document that outlines how a company can keep running during a crisis. It covers everything from backup systems, communication channels, emergency contacts, and recovery strategies. A good business continuity plan can help you avoid downtime, minimize losses, and protect your reputation. In this blog post, we'll show you how to create a business continuity ...
Business Continuity Planning: How To Create and Maintain BCPs
What is business continuity planning? The ISO 22300:2018 vocabulary publication on Security and Resilience defines a business continuity plan (BCP) as documented information that guides an organization to respond to a disruption and resume, recover, and restore the delivery of products and services consistent with its business continuity ...
Business Continuity Plan: Example & How to Write
A business continuity plan is a practical guide developed by companies to enable continuous operations in the event of major business disruptions like natural disasters and global lockdowns. Business continuity planning usually involves analyzing the impact of disrupted business processes and determining recovery strategies with management.
Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Planning (BCP & DRP)
In an IT context, business continuity is the capability of your enterprise to stay online and deliver products and services during disruptive events, such as natural disasters, cyberattacks and communication failures. The core of this concept is the business continuity plan — a defined strategy that includes every facet of your organization ...
Key steps to create a resilient business continuity plan
A business continuity plan is your organization's central shield against disruptions. It's your all-encompassing strategy to reduce downtime, minimize damage, and maintain your organization's overall health. Meanwhile, a DRP zooms in on your information technology infrastructure and data. It's your insurance policy for digital assets.
How to craft an effective business continuity plan
A business continuity plan describes how you'll continue your business when disaster hits. It is a structured strategy outlining how your organization will maintain essential functions when disaster strikes, to ensure minimal downtime and guarantee that operations continue.
What is a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)?
A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a detailed strategy and set of systems for ensuring an organization's ability to prevent or rapidly recover from a significant disruption to its operations.The plan is essentially a playbook for how any type of organization—such as a private-sector company, a government agency or a school—will continue its day-to-day business during a disaster scenario ...
What is a Business Continuity Plan? [+ Template & Examples]
A business continuity plan is a risk management strategy that a business implements to protect its operations in the face of an unexpected event or disruption such as a natural disaster, cyberattack, or technological failure. By anticipating and preparing for potential crises or unplanned eventualities, businesses can take preemptive measures ...
Introduction to Business Continuity
Business continuity is about having a plan to deal with difficult situations, so your organization can continue to function with as little disruption as possible. Whether it's a business, public sector organization, or charity, you need to know how you can keep going under any circumstances.
Business continuity plan (BCP) in 8 steps, with templates
Step 1: Establish an emergency preparedness team. Assign a team the responsibility for emergency preparedness. Select a few managers or an existing committee to take charge of the project. It's advisable to assign one person to lead the planning process.
What Is Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery?
A business continuity and disaster recovery plan should include a risk assessment of the potential errors and events that could interrupt normal operations, an impact analysis of what assets and computer systems would be affected, an estimate of potential financial losses, and provisions for keeping people and processes running during a crisis.
What Is Business Continuity?
Business continuity refers to the plans, technologies, and processes an organization puts in place so it can maintain critical functions in the event of a disruption or disaster, whether planned or unplanned. A business continuity plan (BCP) has four main components. Scenario planning involves identifying potential threats and assessing the ...
Business Continuity Planning
Business Continuity Training Introduction. An overview of the concepts detailed within this training. Also, included is a humorous, short video that introduces viewers to the concept of business continuity planning and highlights the benefits of having a plan.
What Is Business Continuity Disaster Recovery (BCDR)?
What is a business continuity plan? Like DRPs, business continuity plans (BCPs) play a critical role in disaster recovery and help organizations return to normal business functions when a disaster happens. Where a DRP focuses specifically on IT systems, business continuity management focuses more broadly on various aspects of preparedness.
What is Business Continuity Management (BCM)?
Business Continuity Plan (BCP) A business continuity plan (BCP) outlines how an organization will continue operating during and after a service disruption. It is a set of procedures and recommendations for handling emergencies. The most important step in this plan is to identify critical business operations that require fast restoration and ...
7 Strategies to Maintain Business Continuity
Business continuity planning relies on businesses providing timely updates that internal staff and external partners and regulators can depend on. Different communication styles and data could be necessary, depending on whether the recipients are executives, staff, customers, business partners, shareholders, or regulators.
My Organization's Business Continuity Program is Built… Now What?
Ensuring your organization possesses a proper, well-rounded Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a great first step to ensuring structural and operational resilience in the face of varied threats - but what happens after the program is built? Establishing and maintaining a BCP is not enough to ensure stability during unforeseen disruptions; the real test lies in the continuous improvement of ...
Business Continuity Plan
A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a strategic blueprint that organisations prepare to ensure continuous operation during and after an emergency or significant disruption. This practical plan emphasises preparedness and outlines how a company will operate under adverse conditions, ensuring that critical functions and processes remain ...
How an Incident Response Plan and Disaster Recovery Plan Differ
How is an Incident Response Plan Similar to Disaster Recovery? While incident response plans and disaster recovery plans serve distinct purposes, they also share several similarities: Both Focus on Business Continuity. Both IRPs and DRPs are essential components of an organization's business continuity strategy. They aim to minimize ...
Tool: Third-Party Business Continuity Compliance Checklist
Evaluating third-party compliance for business continuity helps heads of ERM ensure that business outcomes are achieved despite disruptions. This checklist provides a structured framework to assess how third parties integrate business continuity management (BCM) into their operations. Included in Full Research
23 Business Continuity Statistics to Know [Updated for 2024]
6. 51% of companies don't have a business continuity plan. A 2020 survey found that 51% of companies across the globe don't have a business continuity plan. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated just how vulnerable a large percentage of businesses were, and a report by the Economic Times underscores the value of having a business continuity plan.
Ensuring Business Continuity: High Availability and Disaster ...
In the tough business world, if systems go down, companies can lose money and damage their reputation. Having a good plan for Odoo hosting is not just a technical thing but also a smart strategy.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Bottom Line

What Is a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)?

Key Takeaways

Understanding Business Continuity Plans (BCPs)

Benefits of a Business Continuity Plan

How To Create a Business Continuity Plan

Business Continuity Impact Analysis

Business Continuity Plan vs. Disaster Recovery Plan

Why Is Business Continuity Plan (BCP) Important?

What Should a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) Include?

What Is Business Continuity Impact Analysis?

What Is A Business Continuity Plan? [+ Template & Examples]

What is a business continuity plan?

Business Continuity Plan Template

Crisis Communication and Management Kit

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Business Continuity Planning

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What Is Contingency Planning? [+ Examples]

Business Continuity Simplified

What Is Business Continuity Management?

What Is a Business Continuity Plan?

What Is Business Continuity Planning?

What Is the Primary Goal of Business Continuity Planning?

Business Continuity Planning Steps

The Business Continuity Management Lifecycle

What Are Business Continuity Risks or Events?

What Is a Business Continuity Strategy?

An Overview of Business Continuity Management and Planning

Key Elements of Business Continuity Management

The Costs of Business Continuity Management

Benefits of Business Continuity Management

Key Business Continuity Management and Planning Considerations

Primary Things Your Organization’s Business Continuity Management System Should Accomplish

The Importance of Senior Organizational Leaders Strongly Supporting Your Business Continuity Management and Planning

Business Continuity Plan Test Types

Business Continuity Management Policy Statement

Cultivating Awareness of Business Continuity Plans

What Is the Importance of a Business Continuity Plan?

How to Write a Business Continuity Plan

Business Continuity Plan Template

What Is a Business Impact Analysis and Why Is It an Important Part of a Business Continuity Plan?

Risk Mitigation for Business Continuity

The Importance of Periodically Testing an Organization’s Business Continuity Plan

What Is a Business Continuity Plan Governance Committee?

How to Cultivate Resilience in Your Organization

Real World Example: Lessons Learned About Business Continuity from the Terrorist Attacks of Sept. 11, 2001

Legislation Governing Some Business Continuity Management and Planning

Guidelines, Standards, and Resources Providing Guidance on Business Continuity Management and Planning

What Is the Business Continuity Institute?

Improve Business Continuity Planning with Real-Time Work Management in Smartsheet

Discover why over 90% of Fortune 100 companies trust Smartsheet to get work done.

Our Network

How to create an effective business continuity plan

What is a business continuity plan?

Why business continuity planning matters

Building (and updating) a business continuity plan

The importance of testing the business continuity plan

Types and timing of tests

How to ensure business continuity plan support, awareness

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