Business continuity plans enable organizations to protect their employees and assets and resume operations in an expedient and controlled fashion.
Business continuity planning (BCP) addresses maintaining the viability of the business enterprise during an emergency. It is a holistic, cost-effective means of preparing to respond to a disaster.
Business continuity plans contain a series of key elements:
A risk management program that includes clearly defined roles and responsibilities, including support organization functions
Business Impact Analysis (BIA)
Specific incident/emergency management responses that identify assembly areas at a safe distance from the site of the incident
Accessible recovery locations and emergency operations centers
A process for automatically switching telephone and data lines
Manual processes for continuing operations until technology is repaired
Processes to deal with the loss of information that are not available from backup data
Development for disaster recovery site
Testing of the business continuity plans on an end-to-end basis
