Ensuring Business Continuity: Planning for Unpredictable Events (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Do you know the drill, the fire drill, hurricane drill, cyber attack drill? During and after a disaster, it's imperative that an organization can maintain essential functions. That's business continuity. And business continuity planning or BCP is the proactive process of understanding company weaknesses and threats in times of crisis, and how to address them. An effective plan enables a business to react quickly and efficiently in the face of unpredictable events, like natural disasters, fires, disease outbreaks and cyber attacks, so it can continue serving customers. The most basic goals are to keep essential functions up and running and to recover with as little downtime as possible. While business continuity is important for any organization, maintaining all functions for the duration of a disaster might only be practical for large enterprises. First, organizations must decide which functions are essential. And this includes business impact analysis and risk assessment in the information gathering phase. Plan development happens in the next phase, followed by plan testing, maintenance and updating. Elements of a business continuity plan include data, including contact information, revision management process, plan purpose and scope, guidelines for how and when to use the plan, policy information, emergency response management, step by step procedures, checklists and flow charts, and a schedule plan for reviewing, testing and updating. The plan should also answer questions like, who will be affected by business disruption? How and when will customers be notified? And what issues must be addressed within the first 48 hours? Specific actions and roles are assigned for each stage of the emergency from initial response to restoration. Plan testing should be done regularly and includes tabletop exercises, walkthroughs, practice crisis communications, and emergency enactments to see how employees and executives react under stress and to determine plan viability. Does your business have a business continuity plan? When was the last time you tested it? Let us know in the comments and be sure to hit that like button too. Transcribed by https://otter.ai