Friday, February 1, 2008

Business Continuity Planning - BCP

Business Continuity Planning is an ongoing iterative process.

Business Continuity Planning is not a project with a finite commencement and conclusion. Access your Business Continuity Planning when you need it from wherever you can gain web access. The web-based model of delivery removes your reliance on the very infrastructure at rrisk of being impacted by a critical event.

The Important Of Planning.

The primary goal of a Business Continuity Planning has always been its successful use in reponse to some form of disaster. In addition to protecting your business, successful use of a Business Continuity Planning can also demonstrate your business resilience to your clients, and other businesses you deal with.

However, there are significant additional benefits to any organisation simply through the creation and ongoing management of a Business Continuity Planning. The creation of a cohesive Business Continuity Planning helps to ensure that representatives from all facets of your business are aware of each other's roles and responsibilities. As the Business Continuity Planning is reviewed it can help highlight issues and provide the required focus on resourcing or change in key business units. And as an organisation and the people within it change over time, a Business Continuity Planning lifecycle review process can help identify adverse impact of change within that organisation.

The Business Continuity Planning Lifecycle

Business Continuity Plannings require a lifecycle approch; as your business grows and changes, the Business Continuity Planning needs to grow and change to help protect your business. Once a Business Continuity Planning is created it needs to kept current through scheduled reviews and updates, and in order to validate that it is current, it needs to be regularly tested.

The following steps are required to create, manage and test your Business Continuity Planning:

  • Project Initiation - program and user hierarchy

  • Funcational Analysis - Business Impact Analysis, surveys

  • Design/Creation - import existing or new files into templates

  • Training - maintain Business Continuity Planning traning schedules, and report on access

  • Testing - store, use and re-use test excercises

  • Maintenance - alert task assignees, report on compliance

  • Execution - use pre-planned response actions, track execution for post-execution review.

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