Securing business continuity

Unexpected events can cause serious disruption: they may even bring down your company. Our Business Continuity Programme will protect your organisation against the negative effects of all unexpected incidents.

All of our technology solutions incorporate elements of fault tolerance and disaster prevention, however we believe this needs to be incorporated into a company-wide programme that addresses all aspects of Business Continuity.

For our Business Continuity service, we first use a set of recognised and well-proven processes to establish the status of an organisation’s ability to survive potentially damaging incidents, either in a total business context, or specifically geared towards technology.

Then, using the following steps, we develop a Business Continuity Programme designed to ensure continuity in all events, from minor to major:

1. Risk assessment
2. Business impact evaluation
3. Strategy development
4. Plan development
5. Plan testing
6. Ongoing reviews and maintenance

What is Business Continuity Planning?

Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is a holistic process that identifies issues which could potentially threaten an organisation, and provides a framework for building resilience, supported by an effective response capability that safeguards key stakeholder interests, reputation, brand and value-creating activities. BCP must be owned and fully integrated into the organisation as an embedded management process.

Identifying in advance the potential impacts of a wide variety of sudden disruptions enables prioritising the various interventions required to achieve resilience in areas of specialist expertise such as security, facilities and IT.

While concerned with all scales of resilience, BCP is particularly about developing organisation-wide defences that will enable an organisation to survive the loss of part or all of its operational capability. It should also look at surviving significant loss of resources such as staff or equipment. And because an organisation’s Business Continuity resilience depends on its management and operational staff as well as technology and geographical diversity, this resilience must be developed throughout the organisation, from senior management to the shop floor, and across all sites and the supply chain.

The driver for organisational resilience is the responsibility senior management have for the long-term interests of the staff, customers and all those who depend on the organisation in some way. Whilst it may be possible to calculate the financial losses of disruption, the most significant impact is usually in damaged reputation or the loss of trust that results from a mismanaged incident. Conversely, a well-managed incident recovery can enhance the reputation of the organisation and its management team.
 
Ensuring effective Business Continuity Management

To be effective, Business Continuity Management (BCM) must be an accepted management process driven from the top of the organisation. It has to be set out in a vision statement that is fu