Building resilience: A comprehensive business continuity plan sample and guide

A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a strategic blueprint organizations create to ensure they can continue operating during and after a disruptive event. It is a comprehensive document outlining how a business will continue to function during an emergency, such as a natural disaster, a cyber attack, or any other event interrupting normal business operations.

Our guide offers a detailed example to help you understand how to sustain operations during unexpected events. Straightforward and actionable, this resource is designed for you to adapt and apply to your own company’s needs—ensuring your business weathers interruptions with minimal impact.

Key takeaways

• Business continuity planning is a customized strategic framework designed to keep critical business functions running during disruptions by identifying potential threats and developing recovery strategies and action plans.
• A robust business continuity plan includes elements such as risk assessments, mitigation strategies, and continuity approaches for critical systems, which must be regularly reviewed, updated, and tested to ensure the plan’s effectiveness.
• Creating a business continuity plan involves assembling a skilled team, conducting a Business Impact Analysis (BIA), and documenting recovery strategies, which must be regularly maintained to respond to technological, regulatory, and market changes.

What is a business continuity plan, and why is it important?

A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a thorough guide that delineates the procedures a company will follow to ensure uninterrupted operation in the face of emergencies such as natural disasters, cyberattacks, or other potential operational disturbances.

The goal of a business continuity plan is to minimize disruption and ensure that the business can maintain critical functions or quickly resume them after an incident. It includes identifying essential personnel, processes, and technologies needed to keep the business running, as well as strategies for handling various types of emergencies.

A well-crafted BCP is proactive, laying out guidelines in advance for decision-makers to follow during a crisis, thereby reducing hasty or ill-informed decisions that could exacerbate the situation. It also involves training employees, establishing communication protocols, and regularly testing and updating the plan to ensure its effectiveness.

In essence, a business continuity plan acts as a life vest for the company, providing the necessary support to keep the business afloat and operational during turbulent times.

Business continuity versus disaster recovery

Although the terms disaster recovery and business continuity are sometimes used synonymously, they represent specific roles within an organization. To gain a clearer understanding of these differences, we should explore how they integrate into your larger business continuity plan framework.

Business continuity plans are designed to sustain operations amid a crisis, serving to protect and keep the business running even in trying times.

A disaster recovery plan is more focused on the aftermath. It concentrates on reestablishing data accessibility and reconstructing IT frameworks after a catastrophe. It lays out methods aimed at regaining complete operational capacity in the aftermath of such an event. In the face of disruptions like cyber assaults or power failures, an expertly devised disaster recovery strategy is pivotal in enabling your business to recover with speed and effectiveness.

Incorporating disaster recovery strategies within your business continuity plan guarantees extensive protection throughout emergencies. This integration is critical for ensuring your business maintains its ability to function regardless of the circumstances.

Eight focus areas of business continuity plans

Business continuity plans can contain a variety of focus areas within an organization. Each type of plan serves a unique purpose and addresses different aspects of business operations that are crucial for resilience in the face of adversity. Here are eight distinct focus areas a business continuity plans can include that are common within different organizations.

Continuity Plan Focus Area #1: Operational 

This type of plan details the procedures for keeping the company’s core functions running, including the management of day-to-day activities and logistics. It ensures that the operational aspects, from production lines to customer service, can continue or quickly resume, minimizing downtime and financial impact.

Continuity Plan Focus Area #2: Technological 

Technological disruptions can cripple an organization. A technological or IT continuity plan outlines the steps to prevent and recover from tech-related interruptions, such as system failures, cyber-attacks, or data loss. It includes implementing robust IT infrastructure, data backup protocols, and quick-response IT teams to safeguard and restore technology assets, ensuring the digital backbone of the business remains intact. The highlighting of potential technological threats along with a detailed action plan, can be documented in something called a business continuity and disaster recovery plan (BCDR). 

Continuity Plan Focus Area #3: Economic/Financial 

An economic continuity plan addresses the financial resilience of a business in the face of economic downturns or market instabilities. It involves strategies for financial risk management, cost control, and liquidity maintenance to ensure the company can withstand and recover from economic challenges while safeguarding its financial health and competitive position.

Continuity Plan Focus Area #4: Workforce/Human Resource 

The workforce continuity plan ensures that a business can function with minimal disruption in the event of issues affecting its workforce, such as health epidemics or personnel shortages. This plan includes cross-training employees, establishing remote work capabilities, and creating policies that support employee well-being and productivity during crises.

Continuity Plan Focus Area #5: Safety 

A safety continuity plan is essential for preserving the well-being of employees and customers during emergencies. It includes health and safety guidelines, emergency response procedures, and evacuation plans. This plan prioritizes the prevention of accidents and injuries, as well as the swift and effective response to any safety incidents that occur.

Continuity Plan Focus Area #6: Environmental

Environmental threats, such as natural disasters or climate change effects, require an environmental continuity plan. This plan involves strategies for protecting assets against environmental risks, ensuring regulatory compliance, and promoting sustainable practices. It includes measures to minimize environmental impact and facilitate a rapid recovery from environmental disruptions. This will be documented in the BCDR as well.

Continuity Plan Focus Area #7: Security 

The security continuity plan is dedicated to protecting the physical and informational assets of a company from threats like theft, vandalism, espionage, and terrorism. It encompasses access controls, surveillance systems, and incident response protocols. This plan is crucial for maintaining the integrity and confidentiality of business operations and sensitive data.

Continuity Plan Focus Area #8: Reputation 

A company’s reputation is one of its most valuable assets. The reputation continuity plan focuses on managing and mitigating risks to the business’s public image and brand perception. It includes crisis communication strategies, public relations tactics, and customer engagement plans to address and rectify any issues that could harm the company’s reputation, ensuring long-term trust and loyalty from stakeholders.

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Three key elements of any business continuity plan

As we’ve shown above, there are different business focus areas, and your business may need some or all of these to operate with resilience and foresight. Still, no matter what the focus of your business continuity plan, it should be straightforward and functional. It must include key elements such as up-to-date emergency contacts, defined recovery strategies, and specific action plans for various emergencies. 

While each area may have unique components tailored to the business, the following foundational elements are vital for an effective response to disruptions.

1. Plan scope objectives must be clearly stated

A business continuity plan must clearly define its objectives, taking into account the available resources and the potential financial impacts. The main aim is to minimize financial losses, which is vital for the business’s survival during difficult times.

At the same time, ensuring customer satisfaction is paramount, as is maintaining essential operations and safeguarding employee welfare. With these objectives in mind, the plan outlines a clear direction for sustained resilience.

2. List each operational risk area (critical business functions and services)

When formulating a business continuity plan, it is crucial to identify and prioritize critical functions. These functions are essential for maintaining day-to-day operations and ensuring key services remain uninterrupted during a disruption. This includes vital operations such as IT services, which are responsible for managing important data, and supply chain management, which ensures necessary materials are available for production.

For instance, your customer support department may be considered a critical service. In the event of a cyberattack compromising the company’s main communication channels, the business continuity plan would outline alternative methods of communication, such as secondary email systems or emergency hotlines, enabling the customer support team to continue addressing client inquiries and maintaining service levels.

Each business component, no matter how small, plays a significant role in the overall functionality of the organization. Therefore, every part of the company, from the IT department to logistics, must be considered when developing a comprehensive business continuity plan to preserve the organization’s operations against adversity.

3. Assign roles and responsibilities and gather contact information

In any Business Continuity Plan (BCP), clarity in assigning roles and responsibilities is paramount. This ensures when an emergency unfolds, there is clarity about who needs to do what, thereby streamlining the response and recovery process. Each role within the BCP should be clearly defined, along with its responsibilities. For instance, it is essential to designate an individual or a team responsible for declaring a disaster. This role is critical as it initiates the execution of the BCP.

Similarly, the plan should outline who is in charge of communicating with relevant authorities, such as reporting a data breach to cybersecurity agencies or coordinating with emergency services. The timing for these communications is often crucial and can have significant legal or regulatory implications; therefore, the plan should specify any required timeframes for reporting incidents.

To ensure all team members can be reached without delay, the BCP must include up-to-date contact information for all individuals with assigned responsibilities. This contact list should be regularly verified and updated, and it should be easily accessible to all members of the continuity planning team. It is also advisable to establish a hierarchy or chain of command within the plan to provide clear guidance on who takes over if the primary person responsible is unavailable.

Crucial steps that surround developing a business continuity planning

You may be tempted to download a handy template and start plugging in information in order to develop a business continuity plan. But there’s more to business continuity management than simply filling out a form. These plans transcend mere paperwork. To guarantee a robust approach to your business continuity plan, you need to work through a systematic approach, involving everything from conducting risk assessments to devising recovery strategies—essential elements providing the backbone of an effective continuity plan.

Assemble your business continuity team

Begin the creation of your business continuity plan by forming a specialized team. This group will take on the crucial tasks of:

• Formulating, executing, and upholding the continuity plan
• Aligning the plan with your company’s strategic targets and aspirations
• Recognizing potential threats and weaknesses within operations
• Creating action plans and standard operating procedures for operational disturbances
• Testing and reviewing how effective the continuity strategies are

Ensure this team reflects the diversity of expertise across your company by including representatives from various departments who possess detailed knowledge about different aspects of business operations.

Conduct a Business Impact Analysis (BIA)

Upon gathering your team, the next step is to execute a Business Impact Analysis (BIA). This process

functions analogously to how a scout would inspect their domain, with the BIA enabling you to:

• Grasp the ramifications of interruptions affecting critical business functions
• Ascertain the upper limits of tolerable downtime
• Identify essential resources needed for maintaining continuity.

Through its ability to detect, measure, and assess the repercussions associated with a shortfall or cessation in operations, a BIA delivers an explicit understanding of potential risks. It aids in strategizing resource allocation when faced with emergencies.

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Conduct risk assessments and develop mitigation strategies

Mitigation strategies and risk assessments are the cornerstone of your continuity plan for business operations. They serve as the proactive elements, pinpointing possible hazards such as cyber threats, natural calamities, or interruptions in the supply chain while evaluating how they may affect vital processes and charting a course toward protection.

Safeguarding your enterprise is not solely about threat recognition. It equally involves bolstering your protective measures – from ensuring the security of your physical workplace to enhancing cybersecurity protocols. Possessing thorough mitigation strategies and risk evaluations equips you with an advantage on the journey toward formulating an unyielding business continuity strategy.

Develop continuity strategies for critical systems and assets

Protecting your critical systems and assets is akin to safeguarding your most valuable possessions. The objective is to guarantee essential business functions, encompassing internal systems or elements of the supply chain, maintain their operations amidst challenging situations. Strategies for this continuity could range from activating alternate backup systems to broadening the diversity within your supply chain.

Develop and document your recovery strategies

With a clear understanding of the potential impacts, it’s time to develop your recovery strategies. These are the plans to guide your business through the storm, ensuring your operations continue with minimal disruption. Some key strategies to consider include:

• Securing alternate locations
• Establishing effective communication channels
• Implementing backup systems and data recovery plans
• Training employees on emergency procedures
• Establishing relationships with key suppliers and vendors
• Developing a crisis management team

These business continuity strategies form the backbone of your business continuity plan.

And remember, a business continuity plan is a living document. Regular updates are crucial to keeping it aligned with technological, regulatory, and market changes.

Maintaining your BCP: Updating, training, and testing

Phew! Now, you have a business continuity plan. Congratulations! But that doesn’t mean you can move on and forget the process, with documentation gathering dust in folders. Maintaining a business continuity plan is an active, continuous process. It necessitates routine management to guarantee its efficacy as new threats arise and the business conditions evolve. 

To ensure your continuity plan remains both effective and pertinent, it’s essential to delve into practices such as periodic revisions and updates. In particular, training and testing protocols are paramount.

Ensuring your team is well-prepared to execute a disaster recovery plan is paramount, as the success of any plan hinges on the competence and readiness of those carrying it out. It’s essential to engage in routine disaster recovery exercises and practice scenarios to ensure everyone understands their duties and can perform them adeptly during an emergency. 

Regular drills serve to pinpoint weaknesses within the plan and to actively maintain its details in your team’s memory, thereby guaranteeing they are primed for prompt response when faced with a disaster.

Need assistance with your business continuity plan? Thoropass can help

Business continuity planning is the process of preparing your business to face unforeseen disruptions effectively. It’s about being proactive and ready for anything, from natural disasters to cyber threats. The process involves assembling a team with diverse skills, analyzing the impact of potential business disruptions, and developing strategies to keep your business running smoothly. 

Thoropass can streamline your entire compliance process by combining smart automation and expert guidance. We also offer a breadth of services as part of our Partner Ecosystem. So whether you’re simply looking for a single source of truth to manage all aspects of your compliance program or hands-on help building things like a business continuity plan, we have a solution for you. With a robust business continuity plan as part of your overall compliance program, you’re not just building a fortress against threats, but also equipping it with advanced security technology.

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