Business Continuity And Risk Management

While these situations are not entirely avoidable, an organization’s ability to recover from such setbacks largely depends on how much energy has been invested into identifying and mitigating risk through the use of a well-established business continuity plan. Lindros and Tittel (2013) explain that business continuity refers to maintaining business functions, or quickly recovering such functions in the event of a major disruption, and the lack of planning doesn’t just mean an organization will take longer to recover, but may never recover at all. The first step to developing an effective continuity plan is a thorough planning process in which an organization establishes

Kaye, David is a leading author, lecturer, examiner and workshop leader on Risk Management and business continuity subjects. Professor Kaye guides a diverse range of companies, and public sector organizations on risk related issues around the world. He is an FCII, FBCI, MIRM, FRSA and chartered insurer. Julia Graham is a former Board member of the Business Continuity Institute, the Chartered Insurance Institute and Chair of the British Standards

Good Business Continuity Planning starts with being proactive. That means taking concrete steps to plan for an incident much before it actually strikes. There is no one single approach that fits for all types of incidents as no two emergencies are identical. Much of business continuity planning varies based on the size of the company, company’s line of business, and the locations of the company, customers and suppliers.

A BCP should cover all of the things that could cease regular business operation. Once that has been establish, then we will need to determine what is required for continue operation during a disaster. Then who are the key personnel and what their job will be in support of the continue operation. Identify the key equipment, storage data area and the secondary location at least 30-50 miles away from your primary position.

MAGALHAES, R. (2005, MAY). THE BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLAN RECOVERY DOCUMENT. RETRIEVED ON FEBRUARY 23, 2007, FROM

After the business continuity plan is completed Incident Response (IR) planning and incident response plan should be performed and established. An incident response plan is “a detailed set of processes and procedures that anticipate, detect, and mitigate the effects of an unexpected event that might compromise information resources and assets.” (Whitman) This is done by first forming an IR committee, establishing an IR policy that integrates the business impact analysis into the incident response plan.

Senior management concern in the development of plan helps in creating a more robust plan where every need is met in a more effective way. In case of any disaster recovery or business continuity plan, main focus is always to find a way through which business operations keep on the track. For this purpose, plan should include methods through which workers would interact with each other and carry out their routine

What would your business due if a major catastrophe happened? This could be anything which disrupted your business. A flood comes through and damages your warehouse. A hacker attacks your main server and corrupts your client database. Your partner suddenly decides he no longer wants to be in business. All of these major events can disrupt or even close your business down.

The Business Impact Analysis will generate interest, support, and momentum in the continuity project as a whole and a risk analysis can greatly reduce the cost of insurance, by identifying and quantifying a potential loss, thereby allowing the risk manager to avoid over or underinsuring the risk. A BIA will allow management to make timely decisions about future business issues. This is accomplished by looking at impacts, over time. (p108 J.F. Broder)

Traveler Insurance believes planning is a key requirement to running a successful business. In the pamphlet Strategy guide for business continuity planning, it states, “like military plans, business continuity plans attempt to provide for and address the unpredictable” (Strategy, 2006). The business continuity plan is a guide to help a company recovery from a disaster. Travelers’ Plan is to help their customer get through an unpleasant disaster with strong commitment. Travelers states, “The aim of this guide is to introduce executives and managers to the importance of planning for disasters and to discuss the factors that planners should consider” (Strategy, 2006). Therefore, this particular plan is to make sure the organization is still

In order for operations to continue at Tip Top Tailors Heartland, continuity strategies must be implemented. Formal emergency response and business continuity plans are provided to control and manage unforeseen incidents effectively and to return the business to normal status. If there is a power failure, or a supplier can no longer distribute merchandise to the store, consequences will result in significant financial losses. The Tip Top Tailors Business Continuity Strategy serves to revive business operations to their day-to-day procedures through a minimum acceptable level should a disruption in the business occur. By using the Maximum Tolerable Downtime (MTD) strategy from the Business Impact Analysis, personnel can analyze and effectively

In today’s net-centric world, even a day offline may damage an organization’s business and profit margin. As a result, it is imperative for organizations to develop and implement effective business continuity plans to ensure the organization has the appropriate procedures necessitated to maintain operations. Accordingly, SANS Institute (2002) explains that it is essential for an organization to understand what incidences it should prepare for and provides these instances as examples:

A disaster recovery plan and a business continuity plan, are very important to all business and their marketing plan. These plans provide detail strategies on how the business will continue to operate, before, doing and after a disaster. About 25% of business that do not have these plans and are hit by a disaster, fail to reopen. (Smith, n.d.). This is why a disaster and recovery and business continuity plan are important to a business if they wish to withstand a disaster and reopen with little or no problem.

As a consultant brought into an organization concerned about business continuity I would recommend to first perform a Risk Assessment Analysis and/or Business Impact Analysis (BIA). Conducting a business impact analysis will allow an organization to know the system or application’s downtime tolerance. The analysis will identify all systems and applications that can experience little to no downtime. Conducting risk assessment analysis will allow the organization to identify all the risks at the beginning and during the life of the organization, and grade the risks in terms of likelihood of occurring and seriousness of impact on the organization. Either analysis is an excellent tool and will result in the beginning creations of disaster recovery and business continuity planning. If using the BIA method a good first step is identifying the business’ most crucial systems and processes to assess what effect the outages will have on the business. All systems or applications should have a back-up location offsite to ensure business continuity. The higher the impact the more money a company should spend in order to quickly gain restoration of their business.

Owning a business can have many stressors day to day. When starting a business there is a lot of planning and preparation involved. Many small businesses are owners who have put their own money into the business and look at it as an investment. Unfortunately with all the planning that goes into starting a business, one thing is often over looked. Most of the time the “what ifs”, are not part of the planning stage. One reason for this is that people do not like to think of the bad things that could or may happen. So with all the time and planning put into starting a business why not put some extra thought into a plan B if a disaster strikes? This plan B could be a business continuity plan or a disaster recovery plan. Business continuity plans are an essential part of the modern day business. There are so many potential disasters for small businesses that could seize the production or even close the business down for good. A recent study from Gartner Inc., found that “90% of companies that experience data loss go out of business within two years. It also found that 80% of company owners have not thought about how they would keep their businesses up and running if a data disaster occurs.” According to the Association of Records Managers and Administrators, “about 60 percent of businesses that experience a major disaster such as a fire close