According to business continuity consultant Paul Kirvan, a BCP should contain the following items:
- Initial data, including important contact information, located at the beginning of the plan
- Revision management process that describes change management procedures
- Purpose and scope
- How to use the plan, including guidelines as to when the plan will be initiated
- Policy information
- Emergency response and management
- Step-by-step procedures
- executive summary, introduction, distribution list, objectives and glossary.
- risk management plan with business impact analysis.
- incident response plan, with plan activation, incident response team, communications and contact list.
- recovery plan.
What is an example of a BCP?
A simple example is an internet dis-connection. In short, the BCP Plan has at its core, the purpose of creating norms and standards so that in adverse situations, companies can recover, resume, and continue their most critical business processes, preventing them from suffering deeper damage causing financial losses.
What is the structure of a BCP plan?
The structure of the BCP Plan. As a rule, a BCP plan is organized into four smaller sub-plans, linked together and each for a different stage. They are: Contingency Plan (Emergency): Must be used as a last resort, when all precautions have failed.
How do I develop a BCP?
A BCP can develop over time and become very comprehensive, incorporating years of thinking and risk mitigation. However, if you are starting from scratch and want to focus on the basics to get you moving, the following is a good list of sections to include in your first written plan: There are numerous things you can add to your plan over time.
What risks should be included in my BCP?
Risks should include natural disasters such as fire and flood, anything that could prevent access to your premises, cyber-attacks, and pandemics that could reduce your available workforce. All of the identified risks should be included in your BCP, together with:
What should every company include in a BCP?
Your BCP should include:An analysis of all critical functions within your business. ... A prioritized list of risks that pose a severe or even catastrophic threat to your business. ... A list of specific strategies (or mitigation activities) that help protect the critical components you identified earlier in the BCP.More items...•
What are the 5 components of a business continuity plan?
Fundamental Components of a Business Continuity PlanWorkspace Recovery.Cyber Resilience.Data Backup, Replication, and Recovery.Personnel.Third-Party Service Providers.Telecommunications.Change Management.Communication and Notifications.
What are the typical sections of a BCP?
They include:Business Impact Analysis: Here, the business will identify functions and related resources that are time-sensitive. ... Recovery: In this portion, the business must identify and implement steps to recover critical business functions.Organization: A continuity team must be created.More items...
What does a business continuity plan involve?
A business continuity plan outlines how you plan on keeping your business operational if there's an unplanned or severe disruption to your usual services. The business continuity plan includes, for example, data recovery and backup procedures, strategies for resuming office productivity, and communication guidelines.
What seven categories of information should be included in a BCP?
At a minimum, the plan should include:Policy, purpose, and scope.Goals and objectives.Assumptions.Key roles and responsibilities.Business impact analysis (BIA) results.Risk mitigation plans.Offsite data and storage requirements.Business recovery and continuity strategies.More items...
What aspects should be focused when preparing a BCP?
To create an effective business continuity plan, a firm should take these five steps:Step 1: Risk Assessment. This phase includes: ... Step 2: Business Impact Analysis (BIA) ... Step 3: Business Continuity Plan Development. ... Step 4: Strategy and Plan Development. ... Step 5: Plan Testing & Maintenance.
What are the 7 steps of continuity management?
7 Steps to an Effective Business Continuity StrategyStep 1 – Find the right partner. ... Step 2 – Conduct a risk assessment to identify potential threats. ... Step 3 – Complete a business impact analysis. ... Step 4 – Design and develop policies and standards. ... Step 5 – Create contingency plans. ... Step 6 – Test and implement.More items...
What are the 3 elements of business continuity?
A business continuity plan has three key elements: Resilience, recovery and contingency. An organization can increase resilience by designing critical functions and infrastructures with various disaster possibilities in mind; this can include staffing rotations, data redundancy and maintaining a surplus of capacity.
How do I write a BCP plan?
This involves six general steps:Identify the scope of the plan.Identify key business areas.Identify critical functions.Identify dependencies between various business areas and functions.Determine acceptable downtime for each critical function.Create a plan to maintain operations.
1. Initial response
When something disrupts day-to-day operations, everyone should understand what – if anything – they should do immediately. By planning for that – and exercising it – no one will be running in circles muttering “What’ll we do? What’ll we do?”
2. Stabilization
Every disruption – regardless of cause – needs the same treatment: containment, to stabilize the situation and to prevent it from getting worse.
3. Activation
Once an impact assessment has been conducted, the services that will need to be restored will become evident.
4. Communication
In response to an incident, multiple stakeholders might initiate various actions to stabilize and or restore services. This could be a diverse group of responders coordinating across multiple geographically dispersed locations. Timely communication between the various respondents is critical to effective incident response.
5. Planned response
After the initial response activities and completion of the initial assessment, incident managers might ‘declare a disaster’ and invoke business continuity plans: the planned response which is the focus of continuity planning. The scope of planned response should include:
6. Extended response
While you may plan for a specific recovery time objective (RTO), actual recovery may take longer; perhaps days, perhaps weeks, or even months longer.
7. Return to normal
When a disruptive event ends, it’s not like a football game. There’s no final whistle and there are questions that will need to be answered:
Introduction
This how-to guide provides guidance for an organization that intends to draft a business continuity plan (BCP). It is aimed at in-house lawyers and risk and compliance teams in organizations of all sizes and all sectors in the United States.
Section 1 – What is a business continuity plan?
A business continuity plan (BCP) is a written procedure provided to key employees of an organization that sets out how the business will continue operating during some unplanned disruption.
Section 2 – Elements of a business continuity plan
An effective BCP is tailored to the needs and risks of your organization. A generic, off-the-shelf plan will not address the unique risks that your organization faces, nor will it consider the culture of your organization and how best to use that culture to mobilize to address disruptions.
Section 4 – Training
Training on at least some aspects of the BCP is essential for all employees, whatever their responsibilities or role in the organization. At the very least, all employees should know what to do to protect themselves from personal injury in the event of a disaster.
Additional resources
The US government’s Ready.gov website provides helpful information regarding preparedness planning for business. The following entities have also published resources to assist business owners and others in preparing and implementing a BCP:
Why is a BCP needed?
The only reason why BCP is required is to keep your company operating. Your BCP strategy must ensure that this is the case. There are a number of lower-level goals that can help you to understand what is the purpose of a business continuity plan, including: Protect critical business functions.
What is the importance of BCP?
Creating a good BCP needs investment in time and money. A big part of justifying the value of business continuity planning is understanding how a BCP helps mitigate risk. Every business faces risks to its continuing existence. While some of these may be unique to each organization, many of them are common.
What is a BCP plan?
This is the plan of action with the recovery strategies that will be implemented by business continuity teams. The BCP describes the sequence of actions to take in the event of a disruption or emergency, including the communication protocols and the responsibilities for executing the plan. Test the plan.
Why is a business continuity plan required?
It isn’t. The purpose of your business continuity plan is to enable your business to continue in operation in as many circumstances as possible. That must be the primary goal of BCP for every organization. The only reason why BCP is required is to keep your company operating.
How to implement a BCP?
Implementing any BCP is a project, so you should follow a project management methodology, using a project team that includes all parts of the business. Business continuity can be implemented solely using internal staff, particularly if you have individuals with the necessary skills and experience. In a large organization, a BCP plan will be prepared by someone that has a role dedicated to business continuity. In smaller organizations, the task can be assigned to another role, but preparing the plan is not an administration task. It requires knowledge of what a BCP Plan should contain and the BCP process flow, strong risk management skills, and a good understanding of who business continuity planning is done for: the whole organization. However, many organizations bring in external companies that specialize in business continuity management (BCM).
What are the roles and responsibilities of BCP?
BCP roles and responsibilities. One of the key activities for any BCP implementation is the definition of roles and responsibilities, both for the implementation itself but also for BCP execution, maintenance, and improvement. Business continuity approaches are often led by a dedicated individual or team.
What is the importance of training in BCP?
Training will ensure that employees are prepared so that they can perform their tasks effectively and operate efficiently during an invocation of the business continuity plan. Without this training, employees will not be able to react effectively or swiftly – precisely when speed is of the utmost importance.
What is the purpose of BCP?
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.
How to develop a BCP?
There are several steps many companies must follow to develop a solid BCP. They include: 1 Business Impact Analysis : Here, the business will identify functions and related resources that are time-sensitive. (More on this below.) 2 Recovery: In this portion, the business must identify and implement steps to recover critical business functions. 3 Organization: A continuity team must be created. This team will devise a plan to manage the disruption. 4 Training: The continuity team must be trained and tested. Members of the team should also complete exercises that go over the plan and strategies.
What is BCP in business?
Business continuity planning (BCP) is the process a company undergoes to create a prevention and recovery system from 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.
What is a BCP plan?
BCPs are different from a disaster recovery plan, which focuses on the recovery of a company 's IT 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.
What is BCP 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.
Why are BCPs important?
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.
What is included in a checklist?
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.
What are the different types of BCP?
As a rule, a BCP plan is organized into four smaller sub-plans, linked together and each for a different stage. They are: 1 Contingency Plan (Emergency): Must be used as a last resort, when all precautions have failed. Defines the necessities and more immediate actions. 2 Management Plan or Crisis Management Plan (CMP): Defines the roles and responsibilities of the teams involved in the activation of the contingency actions before, during and after the event. 3 Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP): Determines the planning for the period after the crisis is passed, when the contingency is controlled, so the company can resume its original levels of operation. 4 Operational Continuity Plan (OCP): Its goal is to restore the functioning of the primary assets that support the operations of a company, reducing down time and the impacts of a possible incident. A simple example is an internet dis-connection.
What is the purpose of BCP?
In short, the BCP Plan has at its core, the purpose of creating norms and standards so that in adverse situations, companies can recover, resume, and continue their most critical business processes, preventing them from suffering deeper damage causing financial losses.
What is a BCP plan?
The BCP plan, or Business Continuity Planning, refers to a set of strategies and preventive action plans to ensure the full functioning of the essential services of a company in any kind of failures, until the situation is normalized. Organizations with a view to the future, which have a well prepared and structured BCP Plan, ...
What is an OCP?
Operational Continuity Plan (OCP): Its goal is to restore the functioning of the primary assets that support the operations of a company, reducing down time and the impacts of a possible incident. A simple example is an internet dis-connection. In short, the BCP Plan has at its core, the purpose of creating norms and standards ...
What is contingency plan?
Contingency Plan (Emergency): Must be used as a last resort, when all precautions have failed. Defines the necessities and more immediate actions. Management Plan or Crisis Management Plan (CMP): Defines the roles and responsibilities of the teams involved in the activation of the contingency actions before, during and after the event. ...
Is a BCP plan the same as a company?
Although in essence it has the same concepts and guidelines, the BCP plan will be different company to company, depending on the nature of the business. For this reason, leaders need to keep in mind three essential conditions for developing BCP plans in their businesses.
What is business continuity plan?
A business continuity plan details processes and procedures that will help keep operations up and running — or restore them as quickly as possible — in the event of a major disaster, whether it be a physical disaster (e.g., extreme weather event) or a technological one (e.g., cyberattack). Whether you’re a small business owner or work ...
What are the benefits of having a continuity plan in place?
Here are some of the primary benefits of having a continuity plan in place. 1. Maintain business operations.
Is a business continuity plan a disaster recovery plan?
A business continuity plan is not a disaster recovery plan. Disaster recovery planning is part of a business continuity program, but the latter has a much broader scope.
Initial Response
Stabilization
Activation
- Once an impact assessment has been conducted, the services that will need to be restored will become evident. Linking the plan to the services/assets that it is designed to recover (or continue) enables the incident management team (IMT) to determine which plans to activate. Who is responsible for the plan? Who will be contacted by the IMT? What will they do, where will they d…
Communication
- In response to an incident, multiple stakeholders might initiate various actions to stabilize and or restore services. This could be a diverse group of responders coordinating across multiple geographically dispersed locations. Timely communication between the various respondents is critical to effective incident response. Communications during an incident response may be to 1…
Planned Response
- After the initial response activities and completion of the initial assessment, incident managers might ‘declare a disaster’ and invoke business continuity plans: the planned response which is the focus of continuity planning. The scope of planned response should include: 1. What is the incident scenario or is it a combination of scenarios? 2. What...
Extended Response
- While you may plan for a specific recovery time objective (RTO), actual recovery may take longer; perhaps days, perhaps weeks, or even months longer. Be prepared for an extended response – even though you don’t expect it (after all, isn’t a business continuity plan supposed to be about preparing for the unexpected?). What resources (facilities, people, supplies, suppliers, technolog…
Return to Normal
- When a disruptive event ends, it’s not like a football game. There’s no final whistle and there are questions that will need to be answered: 1. Is the return to ‘normal’ or a ‘new normal’? 2. How will back-logs of work be reduced? 3. How will work be divided between ‘normal’ operations and these post-event tasks? 4. How will information – for insurance and regulatory purposes – be collecte…
The Author
- Jennifer Craig is manager, marketing at eBRP. Jennifer has been the cheerleader for everything eBRP – from designing & coordinating tradeshows, print ads, press releases and building eBRP’ s web presence. Strategic efforts with LinkedIn, Twitter, WordPress and Hootsuite makes Jen the key social media marketing champion at eBRP. Her efforts have greatly enhanced eBRP’s brand …
Introduction
- This how-to guide provides guidance for an organization that intends to draft a business continuity plan (BCP). It is aimed at in-house lawyers and risk and compliance teams in organizations of all sizes and all sectors in the United States. Business continuity has always been a concern for an organization. The covid-19 pandemic, many natural disasters, etc. have e…
Section 1 – What Is A Business Continuity Plan?
- A business continuity plan (BCP) is a written procedure provided to key employees of an organization that sets out how the business will continue operating during an unplanned disruption. The plan is used to maintain business functions or to resume them quickly in the event of major disruption, such as fire, flood, supply disruptions, or global pan...
Section 2 – Elements of A Business Continuity Plan
- An effective BCP is tailored to the needs and risks of your organization. A generic, off-the-shelf plan will neither address the unique risks that your organization faces, nor will it consider the culture of your organization and how best to use that culture to mobilize to address disruptions. It should be supported by all stakeholders, especially senior management, and cover the operation…
Section 3 – Drafting A Business Continuity Plan
- Drafting an effective BCP involves four principal steps: 1. conducting a business impact analysis of your organization’s operations; 2. conducting a risk and threat analysis; 3. designing a strategy for post-disruption recovery; and 4. training on the BCP.
Section 4 – Training
- Training on at least some aspects of the BCP is essential for all employees, whatever their responsibilities or role in the organization. At the very least, all employees should know what to do to protect themselves from personal injury in the event of a disaster. For example, an organization with its physical location in an area prone to tornadoes should make all employees aware of wh…