The underlying concept of business continuity is that an organization must have the strategic and tactical capability to plan and respond to business incidents and interruptions, in order to continue business operations at an acceptable predefined level. This chapter proposed an approach to business continuity management in an organization through the definition and implementation of a set of four related phases. The authors integrate the main guidelines, based on the literature review and on good practices and concerns, referred to in the ISO standards and on ITIL, CMMI, and COBIT frameworks. This approach will allow organizations to address the most relevant activities for the development of a business continuity management program. By implementing each of the phase activities, the organization will have a systematic overview of the steps required for an optimized planning and response to business incidents and disruptions, supported by the strategy defined framed within their needs.
TopBusiness Continuity Management
Contingency planning and DR were, in the past, largely information technology-led responses to natural disasters and terrorism that affected businesses. Nowadays (Tangen & Austin, 2019), recognize that this needs to become a business-led process and encompass preparing for many forms of disruption, creating a discipline known as BCM.
Any incident has the potential to cause major disruption to the organization's operations and its ability to provide products and services. However, (Filho, 2016) states that implementing BCM before a disruption incident occurs, rather than waiting for something to happen, allows the organization to resume operations before unacceptable impact levels emerge.
Thus, BCM can prepare the organization to maintain the continuity of its services during a disaster by implementing a contingency plan (Syed & Syed, 2004).
As a starting point, (Hiles, 2011a) considers that it is useful to obtain a statement of support from the administration, stressing the importance of the BC project and that some of the benefits of BCM are: