A business continuity plan describes how you plan to keep your business operational in the event of a serious or unplanned interruption to your regular services. The business continuity plan includes, for example, data backup and recovery procedures, strategies for resuming office productivity, and communication guidelines. Your business continuity plan should contain all the information you need to get your business back up and running after an incident or crisis. This may include operating remotely from your regular place of work.
A business continuity plan (BCP) is a system for preventing and recovering from potential threats to a company. The plan ensures that personnel and assets are protected and able to operate quickly in the event of a disaster. In a world that is always active 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, global companies can gain a competitive advantage (or lose market share) based on the reliability with which IT resources meet core business needs. To receive these benefits, we recommend using robust business continuity planning software.
Evaluate the impact that these risks would have on your company and the strategies needed to reduce the impacts they could have. The business continuity plan becomes a reference source at the time of a business continuity event or crisis and the model of strategy and tactics for dealing with the event or crisis. The following figure illustrates a business continuity planning process used by Kyndryl Global Technology Services. Some organizations use external business continuity management consulting services to help identify and address the synchronization of resilience between business processes, applications and IT infrastructure.
There are proactive services, such as Kyndryl's IT infrastructure recovery services, that help companies identify risks and ensure that they are prepared to detect, react to and recover from an interruption. Nowadays, organizations are increasingly aware of their vulnerability to cyber attacks that can paralyze a company or permanently destroy its IT systems. Consultants can provide flexible business continuity and disaster recovery consulting to address a company's needs, including assessments, planning and design, implementation, testing, and comprehensive business continuity management. Business impact analysis, recovery, organization and training are steps that companies should follow when creating a business continuity plan.
It is more comprehensive than a disaster recovery plan and contains contingencies for business processes, assets, human resources and business partners, all aspects of the company that may be affected. Senior management must develop an effective business continuity plan and review it periodically. Completing the analysis can help companies identify and prioritize the processes that have the greatest impact on the company's financial and operational functions. Research studies have shown that, without proper planning, companies that somehow recovered from an immediate disaster often don't survive in the medium term.
While both work together in unison, business continuity is about planning how to keep the company going despite the disaster, while the DCP is designed to rebuild infrastructure damaged after the disaster.
