What Is Business Continuity Planning?

A business continuity plan is a set of management requirements and regulatory processes based on business operating rules, enabling an organization to respond quickly to emergencies to ensure that key business functions can be sustained without causing business disruption or changes in the nature of business processes .

Business continuity plan

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A business continuity plan is a set of management requirements and regulatory processes based on business operating rules, enabling an organization to respond quickly to emergencies to ensure that critical business functions can be sustained without causing

A business continuity plan is a set of management requirements and regulatory processes based on business operating rules, enabling an organization to respond quickly to emergencies to ensure that key business functions can be sustained without causing business disruption or changes in the nature of business processes .

Business continuity refers to the ability of an enterprise to respond to risks, automatically adjust and respond quickly to ensure the continuous operation of its business. Providing business continuity for important enterprise applications and processes should include the following three aspects.

1. High availability. It refers to the ability to continue to access the application in the event of a local failure. Whether the failure is a business process, physical facility, or IT software and hardware failure.

2. Continuous operations. It refers to the ability to keep the business running continuously when all equipment is fault-free. Users don't need the ability to stop applications just for normal backup or maintenance.

3. Disaster Recovery. It refers to the ability to recover data at different locations when a disaster destroys a production center.

At the same time, the above three parts are not isolated from each other, they are interrelated and they are intersecting.

It is necessary to distinguish between business continuity and disaster recovery. Strictly speaking, disaster recovery is the ability to recover data as part of a business continuity plan.

Make business continuity planning part of your culture of change management. After developing a business continuity plan for your business, don't set it aside. To make the plan work, it needs to be turned into active documentation. If the business model of the company changes, or the business process is redesigned, or important contacts no longer work for the company in the event of an emergency, the old plan needs to be updated in time. When there is a change, every employee should ask themselves how the change will affect their part of the business continuity plan.

In formulating a business continuity plan, there are several key steps to follow:

Identify business critical functions

The company's business plan usually determines the company's key mission and business functions. These features must be prioritized so that what is critical to the survival of the company can be identified.

Identify resources and systems that support critical functions

After identifying the key features, it is necessary to find out exactly what support is needed to implement these features. These supports are not necessarily just computer systems; they may also be support from employees, programs, tasks, supplies, and vendors. During the planning process, it is necessary to determine the consequences for these key functions if some resources and systems are not available.

Someone needs to analyze these resources, and such analysis should be done by those who understand the resources and how they provide functionality to the business. These people should generally understand the interdependence between resources and the real consequences of a lack of resources.

Estimating potential catastrophic events

In this step, we have to identify all possible accidents and disasters, which is very challenging. This may require outside consultants to participate in the formulation of the plan, mainly because "the authorities are obsessed, the onlookers are clear." They may be able to think of some issues that our team could not imagine.

Choose a planning strategy

This step includes developing plans for how to recover critical resources and assessing contingency plans. A disaster recovery plan typically includes activities such as emergency response, recovery, and restart. Emergency response involves protecting lives and stopping further damage. Recovery includes a series of necessary steps to get critical functions back to work. A restart is an activity that returns a company to its original working state. It is particularly noteworthy that the strategy adopted in the plan should be considered based on several aspects such as logic, feasibility, and economics, that is, to achieve a better tradeoff. In order to restore critical functions, sacrifice is sometimes made in certain areas, and this sacrifice should be decided when planning.

Implementation Strategy

Once the strategies have been decided, they need to be documented, which brings our efforts from the pure planning stage to the actual implementation and action stage. Also, be careful to keep the scheduled backups in one or more places other than the primary site. This way, once the main site is broken, the team can still get a coherent plan.

Test and revision plan

We need to regularly test our business continuity plan because the environment is constantly changing, and each test can bring some improvements. One or more employees need to be specifically assigned to perform the duties of regularly testing and maintaining this plan.

Maintenance of the plan can be incorporated into the change management process so that any changes to the environment will be reflected in the plan. ^[1]

Nowadays society, especially the economic society, has become increasingly dependent on the network, and traditional backup and recovery security plans have been unable to guarantee the continuous operation of enterprise business. Many companies want to establish their own business continuity plans, but often suffer from a lack of necessary resources. ^[2]

Basic elements of BCP

In general terms, BCP has only one goal, which is to identify and reduce the possible losses caused by dangers, and effectively protect business continuity. Some specific goals of BCP are described in the following sections.

The end result of BCP implementation is:

The BCP formulated by each enterprise should have unique characteristics of each enterprise or industry, and they will not be completely consistent with each other, but in general, a complete BCP is mainly composed of the following key parts:

I. Risk assessment

Hazard assessment is the recognition and analysis of the results of various potential hazards. These sources of danger can be:

All hazards should be included in the risk assessment scope of the enterprise, and the possible sources of various hazards should be accurately located. For each source of danger, one should recognize:

For example, if divided according to the presence of warning signs, various types of dangers can also be divided into:

If classified according to the type or degree of danger, their impact on the business can be divided into:

Obviously, for a company, a complete BCP must take into account all possible dangerous situations as much as possible. There is only a plan to deal with catastrophic events and no plan to deal with application system errors. Such a BCP is incomplete. Of course.

The BCP formulated by an enterprise should take into account both aspects-prevention and control. For example, human accidents and vandalism can be prevented through assessments of physical security and personal behavior. Application system errors can be prevented through effective evaluation and testing of the software.

The final result of the risk assessment should be a detailed statement report on the analysis of hazards and benefits. There should be an accurate description of the hazards, which hazards may occur, and measures to ensure business continuity and mitigation of risks. Analysis of the dangers. The report should also describe any existing prerequisites or constraints.

Business Impact Analysis (BIA)

Business Impact Analysis (Business Impact Analysis) is essentially an analysis of key corporate functions and the possible losses and impacts once these functions become ineffective.

For key people in business operations, they need to analyze:

A. Impact

B. Business recovery needs

After performing these analyses, it is possible to categorize the various functions of the enterprise:

a) Critical functions-If such functions are interrupted or disabled, it will completely endanger the business of the enterprise and cause serious losses.

b) Basic functions-Once these functions fail, they will seriously affect the ability of the enterprise to operate for a long time.

c) Necessary functions-the enterprise can continue to operate, but the failure of these functions will greatly limit the efficiency of the enterprise.

d) Favorable functions-These functions are beneficial to the enterprise; but their absence will not affect the operational capabilities of the enterprise.

Based on the recovery needs of various functions, enterprises can develop a standard recovery time structure for these functions. For example, key functions <1 day; basic functions: 2 to 4 days; essential functions: 5 to 7 days; favorable functions:> 10 days.

Impact analysis can help companies prioritize various business functions, in other words, determine the priority recovery order for each business function.

BIA helps define what to restore. After performing an impact analysis, you may find that when restoring business operations after a disaster, it is sufficient to restore some functions first, for example, to restore 40% of daily business first within 24 hours.

It is also possible to define in detail the resource requirements that guarantee the operation of business functions after a disaster or business interruption. These resource requirements include infrastructure, human resources, documents, records, equipment, telephones, fax machines, etc. No matter what resources are required, there must be complete specifications. It is very important to have the appropriate details, because when a dangerous event occurs, there will be a certain degree of panic, and then it is impossible to decide such details.

Cost factors cannot be ignored in impact analysis. Here are some things we need to keep in mind:

Third, the strategy

BCP should include the following strategies:

A. The purpose of prevention is to reduce the possibility of disaster. Prevention strategies should include deterrence and preventive control. Stopping controls can reduce the likelihood of danger. Preventive control is to protect the weak areas of the enterprise to prevent the occurrence of danger and reduce its impact. These two types of controls exist widely in actual operations, such as business site security, personnel control, related infrastructure (such as UPS, backup batteries, smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, etc.), software control, and related storage and recovery.

Enterprises want to guarantee the availability and security of their resources (including information assets). Their security policies must be tailored to these objects and provide guidance on resource use and management. After becoming familiar with all the resources of the enterprise, the layout of the resources, and risk management, it is possible to come up with the necessary control measures required to implement the security policy. These controls or safety measures must be checked and tested from time to time.

If a security strategy can put in place preventive measures to monitor intrusions into the system and prevent actions that attempt to undermine the system, then it is a stop control in itself. Prevention plans must be implemented with care. It must be ensured that the implementation of security policies can neither bring restrictions to daily business, cause bottlenecks, nor cause usability problems, or cause obstacles to system access and use.

B. Response Response is the response when a danger occurs. It must be able to prevent further expansion of the danger, assess the extent of the danger, restore the company's reputation through normal communication with the outside world, and initiate the necessary recovery schedule.

The first response to a business interruption should be to inform all involved. If there is an early warning of danger (such as this SARS outbreak), this notification can be made in advance. Timely notification is important because it may create opportunities to prevent further expansion of the danger. If a shutdown, a switchover, or an evacuation is performed at the right time, it may even be possible to prevent the danger completely. But this requires the presence of diagnostic or detection controls. This type of control can either be continuously scanned for signs of outages (network, server), or it can gather information from external sources (natural disasters).

Accurate notification procedures must be developed in advance. It must be clearly documented: who needs to be informed, how, and by whom, and there must be a gradual expansion mechanism.

A notification tree must be set up in the BCP. The initial notification is sent to one group, and then each of them informs the other group, and so on. Those who belong to this informative tree have different responsibilities and roles. The people involved should include:

It is also very important that each team should clearly identify the second person in charge. In case the first person in charge fails to notify or cannot take responsibility, the second person in charge must be notified. Use a variety of tools or means to inform: mobile phones, pagers, text messages, phone calls, and E-mail. Each team should be equipped accordingly.

The risk assessment team should be informed the earliest (or at the same time as the management team). They should come to the scene at the earliest in order to assess the extent and level of danger they have suffered. If the job site has been damaged, then they should be prepared to start work once they are allowed to enter the site.

The evaluation process itself should also be carried out in a planned manner, and must be closely related to the priorities for ensuring business continuity. This means that the assessment team should be aware of whether the work areas and workflows affected by the hazard are critical to the operation of the entire business. This will help them optimize their assessment process while also focusing on critical work areas. This team needs to look at the following:

With the detailed information provided by the hazard assessment team on the extent and area of damage, the technical team is immediately ready to work.

The BCP must have a set of preset parameters based on business impact analysis and sustainability goals. These parameters should be able to distinguish between the different nature of disruptions and disasters, while also assessing the severity of the danger.

When the risk assessment team and the technical team begin work, other BCP teams should also be in place in accordance with the warning notice in order to take the action that should be taken according to the continuity plan.

C. Business Resumption Business resumption involves only those time-sensitive business processes. It is either to resume immediately after an interruption, or to resume after an allowable average time, but not to restore all services.

Once the BCP is activated, orders will be issued from the command center. This command center should be in a place different from the daily business place. The center should be equipped with corresponding communication facilities, office equipment, and if possible, a local area network and VPN should be built.

The first decision that needs to be made is whether critical business operations can resume operations quickly in the daily workplace or in an alternative location.

Alternative places can be divided into the following categories:

(a) Cold Site-The site only needs to be equipped with the necessary environmental conditions, for example, it should be equipped with telephone sockets, power supplies, UPS, etc., but to avoid any other equipment inside, its role is Prepare to move in all the equipment needed to ensure business continuity.

(b) Hot Site-The site is a complete backup site with space for personnel to work, all facilities are readily available, and data backup is up-to-date. Once a disaster occurs, the BCP team only needs to be stationed at the site to begin work without additional time delay.

(c) Warm Site-This site is actually a hot site equipped with some equipment. The data backup is not the latest, but it should not be too old.

(d) Mobile SiteThis site is a mobile site with a small facility configuration. It can be located near the main business location, thus saving key personnel time on the journey.

(e) Mirrored Site-The site is identical in all respects to the main operating site, and information and data are synchronized with the main site. In fact, this place is a redundant place under normal conditions, so it is usually the most expensive option.

At alternative sites (or primary sites, if still available), the work environment needs to be restored. Communications, networks, and workstations need to be set up. Communication with the outside world must continue to flow. Enterprises can manually resume some businesses first until critical IT operations can continue to run. Of course, if recovery plans (discussed below) allow, critical business functions can also be restored quickly and automatically.

D. Business Recovery (Recovery) Business recovery is a business process with a slightly lower start time sensitivity. The start time of business recovery depends on the time required to continue those time-sensitive business processes.

At the place where the business is restored (may be the main business place or an alternative place), the operating system needs to be restored on the backed-up equipment, and the necessary application systems are restored in a critical order. After the application system serving key functions is restored, data needs to be restored from backup tapes or other offsite backup media.

The backup data must also always be synchronized, that is, the reconstructed data should coincide with the data at a predetermined time point before the business interruption. The choice of this point in time depends on the requirements of the critical business. Because commercial data comes from a variety of sources, each type of data reconstructed must achieve the required data consistency state. Synchronized data must be reviewed frequently and kept valid. This review must be enforced because, at the critical moment of danger, there is no longer time to test the availability of data. Therefore, there must be a clear set of methods, strategies, or checklists to perform this process of keeping data valid.

Once the data has reached a reliable state, business transactions can be accelerated because disasters have been dealt with and all critical functions have been continued. Gradually, other businesses may begin to resume their functions.

E. Restoration The restoration principle is to repair and restore the main place of business. The ultimate goal is to completely restore all business processes in the original location or a completely new location.

Just as the recovery team began supporting recovery operations from an alternative location, the restoration of the full functionality of the main location could begin. If the original site cannot be recovered after the disaster, recovery work will need to be performed at a new site. The members of the recovery team and the recovery team may be the same group.

It must be ensured that the rehabilitation site is equipped with the necessary infrastructure, equipment, hardware, software and communications equipment. And test whether the site can handle all business processes.

The plan to implement all of the above actions should include a time span definition that determines which actions must be completed within a certain span. The definition of this time span must be consistent with the company's recovery goals. The BCP team must be aware that if at any point their actions exceed the prescribed time span, the accident must be reported to the command center immediately, and the command center will immediately formulate a corresponding solution, otherwise the company cannot achieve its recovery aims.

Fourth, the definition of indicators

After the risk assessment and business impact analysis phases, the basic business that keeps the business continuous has emerged. We have said above that according to business terms, the business functions of an enterprise can be divided into 4 categories, that is, key business, basic business, necessary business and beneficial business.

This classification can make the priority of business continuity very clear, so that the goal of business recovery can be quantified with the following indicators:

The business continuity plan can be divided into several separate plans: prevention, response, business continuity, business recovery and recovery plans, or each of these plans can constitute a different chapter in the overall plan.

1. Basic items

2. Preventive protection

As an implementation part of the BCP, precautionary measures need to be explained here. These measures can be summarized as follows:

3 Emergency response

4 Business continuity

How to connect from the emergency response stage to the business continuation stage needs to be explained here. The decision-making process of business continuity operations, where and how to carry out business continuity, what actions need to be taken, and to what extent to which business should be continued, all need to be explained here. Each group in the BCP team should also be assigned their own actions, and each group should complete the assigned tasks. This part of the BCP is also known as the Business Continuity Plan (BRP).

5. Business recovery

The procedures for performing business recovery are described here. This part of the BCP can also be called a disaster recovery plan (DRP).

There are many ways to organize this part of the planning document. One way is to simply list all the recovery goals (listed by RPO, RTO, target server / network, etc.). Decompose the plan according to each goal, and clarify the corresponding team / person and tasks. Another way is to organize by department. Either way, all BCP objectives should be ensured.

This part of the plan must be structured like an operation manual, consisting of a series of simple and clear instructions, and the recovery team can fully perform recovery operations in accordance with these instructions. The interrelationships between the various operations must also be clearly stated. All instructions and instructions must be clear to avoid loss of time due to possible misunderstandings or ignorance.

6. recovery

The steps to be taken to restore the original site for business operations are explained here. The responsibilities and tasks of each team / person need to be identified.

There are 6 phases of BCP operation, namely: 1. project initialization, 2. risk analysis and business impact, 3. strategy and implementation, 4. BCP development, 5. training plan, 6. testing and maintenance.

Project initialization

2. Risk analysis and business impact analysis

3. Business continuity strategy and implementation

4.BCP development

5. Training plan

6.Testing and maintenance

Conduct demonstrations and regular tests to enhance confidence and efficiency and ensure that relevant documents are updated frequently.

(1) BCP test

The developed BCP needs to be properly tested before it can be put into use. This process must often be performed periodically. Omitting this process means that the BCP can only perform field tests after the disaster actually occurs. The risk of doing so is too great, and I am afraid that no company dares to make this attempt.

Planning a BCP test requires the following:

· Test Script-Defines a possible disaster as part of the test.

Test planDefines inspection procedures, various test scripts, task types, and task participants, such as the main team or mixed actions of the main team and the preliminary team

In short, the following actions need to be performed when testing BCP

(2) Maintenance of BCP

A BCP must be inspected and maintained periodically. Once a new system, new business process, or new business action plan is added to the enterprise's production system or information system, which causes the overall system of the enterprise to change, it is even more necessary to force the start of this inspection procedure. In addition, minor changes like changes to the contact list can trigger updates to the BCP plan.

Every time this inspection procedure is performed, it is best to combine it with the improvement of BCP. For example, problems found during the test, adjustments made to the organization by the company in order to achieve continuity, or better ways of action and plans found when maintaining business continuity testing. Therefore, the maintenance of BCP should be a combination and continuous promotion of changes and improvements.

Every change to the BCP plan should be notified to all BCP teams in a timely manner and implemented in each training and testing process.

Finally, resources related to business continuitypeople and equipmentare also affected by maintenance. Personnel are affected through training and testing procedures, and equipment is affected through maintenance procedures. Only when these resources are always in good condition can they become reliable and dependable resources in the event of a crisis.

A company without a business continuity plan is like unarmed, and it is impossible to prevent any loss caused by unpredictable damage. So companies must take business continuity planning seriously.