Business continuity planning (BCP) "identifies an organization's exposure to internal and external threats and synthesizes hard and soft assets to provide effective prevention and recovery for the organization, while maintaining competitive advantage and value system integrity”. It is also called business continuity and resiliency planning (BCRP). A business continuity plan is a roadmap for continuing operations under adverse conditions such as a storm or a crime. In the US, governmental entities refer to the process as continuity of operations planning (COOP).
Any event that could impact operations is included, such as supply chain interruption, loss of or damage to critical infrastructure (major machinery or computing/network resource). As such, risk management must be incorporated as part of BCP.
In December 2006, the British Standards Institution (BSI) released an independent standard for BCP — BS 25999-1. Prior to the introduction of BS 25999, BCP professionals relied on information security standard BS 7799, which only peripherally addressed BCP to improve an organization's information security procedures. BS 25999's applicability extends to all organizations. In 2007, the BSI published BS 25999-2 "Specification for Business Continuity Management", which specifies requirements for implementing, operating and improving a documented business continuity management system (BCMS).
In 2004, the United Kingdom enacted the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, instructing emergency services and local authorities to actively prepare for emergencies. Local authorities were given the legal obligation to actively lead promotion of business continuity practices in their respective jurisdictions.
Read more about Business Continuity Planning: Solution Design, Implementation, Testing and Organizational Acceptance, Maintenance
Famous quotes containing the words business, continuity and/or planning:
“All our lives we fought against exalting the individual, against the elevation of the single person, and long ago we were over and done with the business of a hero, and here it comes up again: the glorification of one personality. This is not good at all. I am just like everybody else.”
—Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870–1924)
“If you associate enough with older people who do enjoy their lives, who are not stored away in any golden ghettos, you will gain a sense of continuity and of the possibility for a full life.”
—Margaret Mead (1901–1978)
“My consciousness-raising group is still going on. Every Monday night it meets, somewhere in Greenwich Village, and it drinks a lot of red wine and eats a lot of cheese. A friend of mine who is in it tells me that at the last meeting, each of the women took her turn to explain, in considerable detail, what she was planning to stuff her Thanksgiving turkey with. I no longer go to the group.”
—Nora Ephron (b. 1941)