A business continuity plan should be a common sense document that addresses the specific circumstances and needs of your business. It provides practical strategies to follow in a crisis, eg fire, flood, storm, explosion, adverse market or financial circumstances, computer viruses or power outages.
A good business continuity plan will give you a better understanding of how your business works, the risks it faces and the things that need to be done to ensure you recover from an incident.
What are the essentials of a business continuity plan?
A business continuity plan should be tailored to fit an individual business, but a typical plan will include:
- A list of essential business requirements identifying risks and assessing the impact they would have on your business, and
- A strategy to respond to, manage, and recover from an incident.
The plan needs to be regularly tested, reviewed and updated to make sure it remains relevant and useful.
Why is business continuity planning so important?
The current security environment makes business continuity planning important. In addition to natural disasters, fire, flood or malicious criminal activity, terrorism is also a threat.
Your business needs to be protected. It is critical that we are prepared and have good business continuity plans in place. Every business should know how they will manage an emergency situation. Planning is best done before an event, not in the middle of it. Time spent planning is never wasted. How quickly your company gets back to business after an emergency often depends on the planning you do now.
