What is Business Continuity Management?

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image : EC council

Business Continuity Management (BCM) can be simply explained as planning to survive from disruptive incidents.

Disasters struck when you least expect it. The cause of the disaster could be a natural or a human factor. Whatever the disaster your organisation need to be prepared.

What are the types of disasters impact your information systems ?

  • Data Breaches
  • Hacking of Systems 
  • Critical application failure 
  • Employee sabotage
  • Service provider outage 
  • Power outages
  • Communication outages
  • Internet outage
  • Fire, Floods etc.
  • Natural Disasters 

Ask your self :

  • What areas of business will each of above disaster impact?
  • What will be the liklyhood of it happening?
  • What will be your loss? 
  • How would you recover?
  • How long the recovery will take?
  • What would it cost?

Although you may not have perfect answers, you need them. 

BCM is a process that will help you identify potential threats, and their impact on your business operations.

In the event of a disaster, an effective BCM ensures recovery and continuity of your business. 

It enables you to provide an  acceptable service to your customers, sustain your employees, maintain supplier relationships  and preserve your reputation to keep revenue coming in.

BCM is is like a self assured insurance, which gives comfort that you can absorb the damage and recover fast if a disaster strikes.

In a Covid-19 like pandemic demanded social distancing and  influenced employees to work from home, organisations to adopt to cloud technologies and e commerce. Did you had it planned? If so it would have become and opportunity.

Ransomware attacks as it appeared in 2021, crippled many businesses across the world. Ransomware  encrypted business data and demand payment for their release. The attacks were mainly carried though phishing emails, which explored hunan weakness of employees. Such threats can be mitigated but never eradicated.

Your organisation's best defence is an effective business continuity planning to build continues disaster resilience. 

An effective BCM enables  organisations to assess potential risks, implement effective controls, establish recovery contingencies and procedures, train employees, and continuesly monitor and  review your plans.

BCM provides many benefits other than ensuring business functionality in the event of a disruption. 

  • 1) Protects organisation’s reputation
  • 2) Boost employees’ morale
  • 3) Build stakeholder  confidence
  • 4) Help meet regulatory requirements

Learn more about BCM

https://www.iso.org/standard/75106.html


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