Your business continuity planning strategy and how to approach it

Your business continuity planning strategy and how to approach it

A business continuity planning strategy can be a daunting task when approached for the first time. Many managers have little or no experience of working with a Business Continuity Plan (BCP), and yet can find themselves tasked with creating and testing their organisation's first-ever arrangements for handling disruptions to the business. This can seem an impossible task at first.

The key to success is to follow an agreed standard such as BS 25999. Based on accepted best practice and the combined experience of many specialists from a wide range of sectors, this standard is intended to guide the manager through the process of formulating a business continuity management plan that fits within the information security service supplied in-house or by an external firm.

The overall strategy follows the familiar Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle, as follows:

Plan: In this phase, you establish the general policy for business continuity, set objectives, and formulate procedures. Part of this process is the creation of a Business Impact Analysis (BIA), which defines the impact on business processes (as against technology) and assets of a given adverse event. Another necessary component is the formulation of a Disaster Recovery (DR) plan for the IT department. This is also the stage where the scope of the BCP is defined, in terms of the areas it will apply to either geographically or thematically. In addition, all key suppliers need to be checked to ensure that they also have a business continuity plan in place. Finally, an Incident Management plan needs to be put together, to cover the short-term consequences of an adverse event.

Do: The next step in BS 25999 is to implement all the plans. This may need to be done on a gradual basis, depending on the size of the organisation and the complexity of the business continuity planning strategy. The BCP includes both short-term and long-term plans. It is not enough to create an Incident Management plan: you also need a strategy to cover the following days and possibly even weeks.

Check: Once the BCP is fully in place, it needs to be monitored on a continuous basis, and evaluated at regular intervals. This includes a review of the BIA to take account of changes in assets, personnel and business processes. There is also a need for occasional "live" tests of the DR plan and Incident management plan.

Act: Finally, the results of the evaluation should be acted upon, and suggested improvements should be fed back into the business continuity planning strategy.

Although the general principles are the same for any business, the precise application of them will vary according to your organisation's specific needs. This is why there can be no "one size fits all" solution: each business must go through the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle of BS 25999 independently. Outside consultants can help immensely, but in the end, each business needs to "own" the business continuity planning strategy for itself, if the BCP is to function as it should.

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