What Is Business Continuity Planning (BCP)?

A business continuity plan, or BCP, is a collection of procedures organizations use for maintaining their operations during times of crisis. It’s a cross-functional guide that includes communication and collaboration plans, as well as backup procedures. A well-developed BCP can help organizations avoid disruptions when dealing with unexpected outages.

Business continuity planning (BCP) is a strategy to ensure that an organization can continue its operations in the event of a major disruption, such as a natural disaster, pandemic, or cyberattack. A business continuity plan (BCP) should include elements such as procedures for dealing with unexpected outages, communication and collaboration plans, and backup procedures.

BCP is important because it helps prevent disruptions from causing business failure. A disruption can cause a wide range of problems for an organization. For example, an incident can interrupt operations, damage the organization’s reputation, cause it to lose valuable data, or cause employees to become unavailable. Additionally, a disruption can lead to financial losses due to lost sales and reduced productivity.

Even if an organization’s facilities aren’t affected, it may still face a loss of customer confidence and revenue if its operations become disrupted. In these cases, the organization may be unable to satisfy customer orders or fulfill its contractual obligations.

A good business continuity plan can help an organization minimize the impact of a disruption and ensure that it continues to operate as smoothly as possible during a disruption.

While disaster recovery (DR) is an important part of an overall business continuity plan, the two terms aren’t synonymous. Organizations can use both DR and BCP to prepare for potential incidents. However, the two processes aren’t identical. The primary difference is that DR focuses on specific IT systems while BCP focuses on the organization‌. Disaster recovery refers to the process of restoring systems that have been damaged or corrupted. An organization can use DR to restore some of its systems following an incident such as a fire or flood. However, DR focuses on restoring specific systems and functions rather than continuing business operations‌.

BCP helps organizations meet their goals by addressing all risks and vulnerabilities to business continuity. By preparing for potential disruptions, BCP can help reduce the impact of a disruption on an organization’s operations and help ensure that the organization can continue to function normally following a disruption.

BCP impact analysis is used to identify how a potential incident may affect an organization and the systems and processes it uses to carry out its activities. This information can then be used to develop and implement measures to reduce the risk to business continuity as much as possible.

Some common types of BCP impact analysis include the following:

• IT impact analysis — This type of analysis helps identify critical IT systems in the organization and the impact a disruption may have on those systems. The analysis may include information about the functioning of the affected systems and the potential consequences of a disruption.
• Process impact analysis — This type of analysis helps identify the processes used in an organization and the impact a disruption may have on these processes. The analysis may include information about the time it’ll take to restore a disrupted process and any potential disruptions that may occur as a result.
• People impact analysis — This type of analysis helps identify the people involved in an organization’s business continuity plan and the impact a disruption may have on their activities. The analysis may include information such as which people could be affected by a disruption and any consequences that could result from that disruption.

Business continuity plans are essential, but not all are created equal. There are many variables your teams must consider to develop a plan tailored to your organization.

With that said, a good BCP should include the following elements:

• Direction and vision — The plan should identify high-level goals and determine strategies for meeting those goals. Identifying goals and objectives in advance ensures that plans remain relevant to the current needs of the organization.
• Strategy development — The plan should include strategies for dealing with potential incidents, such as how to respond to emergencies or how to maintain operations if a facility becomes inaccessible. It also should include plans for rebuilding and resuming operations after a disruption.
• Planning and testing — The plan should be tested regularly to ensure that it is effective. This includes simulating various types of disruptions and assessing the impact on operations.
• Updating – The plan should be updated regularly to reflect changes in the organization’s environment or to address new developments in business continuity planning practices.
• Leadership support — The organization’s senior leadership should endorse the plan and implement it as directed. This ensures that the plan is properly funded and executed.

There is no universal approach to developing a BCP. Organizations have different needs based on industry, size, and other factors. However, there are some key considerations to make regardless of the type of organization. Here are some of the most important steps to creating a strong business continuity plan:

1. Identify the organization’s priorities. Consider factors such as any legal requirements related to organizational continuity and the business objectives of the organization. These factors will help the organization determine where to focus its efforts.
2. Identify the business functions that are critical to the organization’s operations. These functions may include sales, marketing, customer service, and information technology (IT) systems.
3. Identify the weaknesses in the organization’s current business resilience strategy. Think about any potential vulnerabilities that could lead to disruptions to business operations.
4. Identify the potential sources of disruption to business operations. Potential sources may include natural disasters, cyberattacks, IT failures, power loss, and other threats.
5. Develop a plan to address each of the identified vulnerabilities. This may include the development of incident response plans, evacuation plans, and/or backup procedures.
6. Conduct training and testing. This is to ensure that the organization is prepared to respond quickly to a disruption if needed.

The development of a business continuity plan requires a great deal of planning and attention to detail. However, a well-developed plan can help organizations avoid disruptions and maintain their operations during times of crisis. Stakeholder participation is vital to the success of an organization’s business continuity planning efforts. Therefore, it’s important that the plan be developed in collaboration with key stakeholders to ensure that it reflects the needs of the organization.

Disaster recovery plan

A disaster recovery plan is a critical component of business continuity planning (BCP) that focuses on restoring IT systems and infrastructure following a significant disruption or disaster. Unlike broader BCP efforts that consider all business operations, the disaster recovery plan (DRP) is specifically aimed at ensuring data integrity, system functionality, and the availability of IT services.

Effective disaster recovery plans often include provisions for data backup, cloud-based failover systems, and defined downtime thresholds that align with business needs. To create a robust DRP, organizations should also consider factors such as system dependencies, risk assessment, and establishing recovery time objectives (RTOs) for various systems and processes.

Disaster recovery plans should be regularly tested and updated to reflect changes in technology, business processes, and potential risks, ensuring that the organization can quickly recover from any disruption while minimizing financial and operational impacts.

Business impact analysis

A business impact analysis (BIA) is a fundamental process within business continuity planning that helps organizations understand the potential effects of a disruption. The BIA identifies critical business functions, determines the impact of a disruption on those functions, and establishes recovery priorities.

The BIA process includes:

• Risk assessment: Evaluating potential threats (natural disasters, cyberattacks, or human error) that could impact business operations
• Assessing the amount of time required to restore business processes and the potential losses associated with prolonged downtime
• Identifying dependencies among business functions, resources, and providers

By conducting a BIA, companies can prioritize their recovery efforts, ensuring that the most essential processes are restored first, thereby mitigating the overall business impact. The BIA also serves as the foundation for effective crisis management and recovery strategies.

Key contact information and crisis management

When a disruption occurs, clear and concise communication is critical. A successful business continuity plan must include up-to-date contact information for internal teams, external vendors, key providers, and relevant stakeholders.

A comprehensive crisis management plan outlines how the organization will communicate during an emergency and designates a crisis management team responsible for coordinating efforts. This team typically includes leaders from human resources, IT, security, and operations. Their goal is to ensure that the business continuity plan is executed smoothly, with minimal confusion or delay.

Key actions to include in the crisis management plan:

• Ensuring real-time communication channels are in place and accessible to all relevant personnel
• Providing clear instructions for escalating issues to management and external agencies
• Addressing cybersecurity concerns during crises, particularly with internet-facing assets and exposed IoT devices

By having clear crisis management and preparedness protocols in place, organizations can reduce cyber risk and enhance the effectiveness of their security teams when responding to a disruption.