Business Continuity Plans: What It Is And How It Works
What is Business Continuity?
Business continuity planning (BCP) is the process of constructing a line of defense that enables your business to continue functioning even if it is under a cyber-attack or under any other disruption which may hamper your business.
In the modern threat landscape, you need to respond and quickly remediate threats before your business suffers reputational or physical harm, data integrity loss, exploitation, and more.
Experts are accepting the notion that getting breached is not a matter of “if” but of “when” more and more by the day. As a form of mitigating and controlling all of the former, BCP emerged as a solution that enables you to continue functioning normally even if compromised.
Why is Business Continuity Important?
You might have your insurance to cover some of the damages that a threat may cause to your business. But insurance doesn’t cover all of the costs, it does not cover your reputational damage and the customers that move on to your competitors. Business continuity planning is important because, if done right, it does account for your reputation and customers. A BCP enables your business to function even when under duress from a cyber-attack or other forms of disruption.
Being able to function normally even when under adverse conditions will increase your brand reputation and reliability.
How To Develop A Business Continuity Plan (BCP)
A solid BCP has to go through these plan stages:
Business Impact Analysis: Identify time-sensitive assets and functions to analyze the damage that a potential threat or disruption can cause to them.
Recovery: This stage of the plan is focused on the steps that should be conducted when a disruptive event occurs.
Organization: A team to handle the continuity procedures must be identified and to create a recovery plan.
Training: The allocated team must be exercised on the plan and recovery strategies.
So a reliable BCP must include:
- A critical analysis of all your core business functions to prepare the necessary resources.
- A list that ranks threats according to their severity.
- A list of recovery or mitigation strategies to aid in defending the identified core functions
- Evidence that the implemented strategies have been tested successfully
- Reports that allow you to foresee challenges and improve the plan over time
When it comes to BCP it is important to notify even those who are not part of the continuity team regarding the implemented BCP.
Your BCP will always be unique since core business functions and the threats that an organization faces on a daily basis always differ. Hence, special time and resources must be dedicated to creating a BCP that fits your specific needs.
With 25 years in the industry and more than 100+ completed projects, HybridValley will be able to help you out no matter what threats or how complicated your threat landscape may be. So, if your BCP needs some finetuning, reach out to us.