BCP (Business Continuity Plan) is the plan that describes how a serious interruption to the business's processes is handled, either if it is one or more processes that are affected.
The plan, or sometimes a collection of plans, relates to both manual and technical actions undertaken to restore the business's ability to deliver. Recovery is usually done in two phases, an initial one to be able to carry out the most critical processes helpfully while the second phase is the permanent recovery.
The plan has a dependency to the more technical recovery plan that is documented in the recovery plans, the disaster recovery is abbreviated DR.
The continuity plan must describe all steps required to restore from a complete interruption until functionality is restored. This also includes internal and external communication plans, accessibility to premises, ensuring the well-being of staff, mandates for decisions and several other areas that are not directly connected to the work to restore the business processes.
The plan must also have a clear prioritization of the various business processes and the order in which these are to be restored, as well as information about the dependencies that exist between the business processes and also other dependencies.
Practicing disaster and crisis is something that needs to be carried out regularly, the plan and/or routine that describes the work with the continuity plan must describe how often exercises are to be carried out and which functions are to participate in the exercises. There must also be clarity in how the exercises are followed up and how to work with the improvements required based on what the exercises identify.
The continuity plan is a living document that needs to be reviewed at least annually and updated when changes are made to business processes, organization, technical environments or other areas that may affect the plan.
Cegal has consultants with broad experience in continuity planning who can be involved in different phases, either as support in the creation of the plans, as support in reviewing already developed plans but also in carrying out crisis exercises.