Continuity Planning

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Business of all sizes and types are being tested in unprecedented ways by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Business continuity and an organization’s operational resilience has become top of mind in boardrooms and C-suites across the world. Protiviti’s Business Continuity Management (BCM) experts are helping CIOs, CISOs, CROs, CFOs as well as other executives such as HR and marketing revisit their business continuity planning (BCP) and evaluate how to implement BCP practices into day-to-day activities.

What is Business Continuity Management? 

Business Continuity Management (BCM ) is the design, development, implementation and maintenance of strategies, teams, plans and actions that provide protection over, or alternative modes of operation for, those activities or business processes which, if they were to be interrupted, might bring about seriously damaging or potentially significant loss to an enterprise. All sectors and sizes of companies can benefit from a BCM program. An Operational Resilience program can enhance and extend traditional BCM practices and concepts by incorporating various approaches such as testing extreme-but-plausible scenarios, front-to-back process mapping and aligning all aspects of cyber, third-party and technology resilience, as illustrated in Protiviti’s Operational Resilience framework.

When creating a continuity plan, organizations should consider the three core disciplines of traditional business continuity management:

• Crisis management and communications – This discipline enables an effective and cohesive response to an event. Crisis management processes focus on stabilizing the situation and supporting the business if alternate modes of operation are needed, using effective planning, leadership, and communication protocols.
• Business resumption planning – This discipline focuses on disrupted aspects of business functions and processes that relate to or support the delivery of core products or services to a customer. Business resumption processes focus on the evaluation of people, processes, technology, and other resources that are vital to the organization's operations. The objective of business resumption planning is to mitigate potential impacts from disruptions, regardless of the cause, by developing plans that guide personnel through operations with diminished capabilities and toward business as usual (BAU).
• IT disaster recovery (ITDR) – This discipline addresses the restoration of critical information technology assets, including systems, applications, databases, storage, and network assets. An ITDR strategy should encompass all technology service provider relationships (e.g., cloud providers) to ensure all technical stakeholders remain aligned.

In addition to the traditional BCM disciplines listed above, there are other closely related programs that many organizations manage as part of their overall BCM program. These programs include:

• Incident management (or incident response) – This term commonly refers to the process of identifying, analyzing and managing the response to a disruptive event. Regardless of the nomenclature used, incident management programs typically include emergency response measures such as the evacuation of facilities, first aid response and first-responder interactions.
• Cybersecurity incident response – This is specific to the planning for, response to, and recovery from a cybersecurity incident such as a data breach, phishing attempt or distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

Why is Business Continuity Management Important?

The value of Business Continuity Management lies in risk mitigation — minimizing the risks associated with any disruption to business as usual. Having a continuity plan allows organizations to respond to risks that not only impact business operations but also provides the ability to protect their people and brand, earn revenue, maintain relevance and remain compliant with regulations. Companies need to stay ahead of these risks by understanding priorities, planning for disruptions, employing good business practices, and exercising forethought to increase their ability to course-correct quickly when things go wrong. 

How Protiviti Helps Clients

No one can predict when the next disaster or business disruption will strike; the only certainty is that something unplanned and disruptive will happen. Protiviti is helping companies prepare and build resilience for the unknown, manage risk and develop sustainable business continuity programs. Our services support your on-going BCM lifecycle planning and management process.

• BCM Program Assessment & Reviews
  • Crisis Management Plan
  • Incident Response Plans
  • Business Resumption Plans
  • IT Disaster Recovery Plan
  • Program Maturity Assessment
• Business Impact Analysis
  • Assess various impacts of a business interruption on key business processes
  • Determine business processes’ criticality, recovery objectives and reliance on business applications and 3rd parties
• Continuity Risk Assessment
  • Assess various impacts of a business interruption on key business processes
  • Determine business processes’ criticality, recovery objectives and reliance on business applications
  • Identify business continuity related risks to the organization
  • Determine likelihood, significance, and velocity of business impact from a continuity perspective
• BCM Strategy Development and Implementation
  • Develop recovery strategies designed to minimize impact from an outage
  • Develop and document crisis management, business resumption, and IT DR plans
• IT Disaster Recovery
  • Determine, document, and implement technical recovery options for IT DR needs
  • Design and execute IT DR testing
• BCM Testing and Training
  • Design and facilitate business continuity or crisis management exercises
  • Develop and execute BCM training for key personnel responsible for recovery activities
• Business Continuity Planning Outsourcing
  • Dedicated business continuity planning personnel
  • Responsible to update your plans, facilitate tests, and ensure your business continuity management plan is always actionable.
• Continuity Project Management
  • Project Management personnel to guide your Business continuity plan team and objectives​
  • Business Continuity Management Project Management Office (PMO)