Business Continuity Planning and Implementation
Business Continuity consists of the day-to-day activities that an
organization performs according to a repeatable, supportable, and
maintainable plan. The plan contains things such as policies,
guidelines, standards, procedures, resources, organizational structure,
templates, etc.
Disaster recovery is sometimes confused with business continuity.
Disaster recovery is a small subset of business continuity and is the
implementation of a project plan that details the activities necessary
to perform in the event of a disaster. Business continuity is an
enterprise wide methodology of conducting day-to-day business. A
successful disaster recovery implementation effort is not only dependent
upon a well thought-out disaster recovery plan; it must have been
derived from an enterprise wide mentality of business continuity.
Furthermore, business continuity must be the beginning point in
systems design, not the ending point. Unfortunately, very few systems
are built starting from the business continuity perspective and working
backwards.
In order to ensure business continuity, organizations must design,
implement, maintain and enforce policies, guidelines, standards, and
procedures that encompass all aspects of their critical business
functions.
