Identify and Prioritize Business Continuity Requirements

Identify and Prioritize Business Continuity Requirements

Business continuity requirements are the essential tasks and systems an organization needs to keep running or restore quickly to minimize disruption during and after an unexpected incident.

The risk that the organization will experience a drastic and dramatic event that threatens its existence is ever present. These events can take the form of natural disaster, civil unrest, international war, global pandemic, and other major situations. The security professional is often called on to address this type of risk and to plan accordingly.

The actions, processes, and tools used to ensure an organization can continue critical operations during a contingency are referred to as business continuity (BC).

Critical operations (also called "critical path" or "mission-critical functions") are those activities and functions that the organization must perform to stay operational; they are a subset of the overall operation of the organization. For instance, during contingency operations, an organization might suspend audit functions or hiring procedures but continue sales and financial activity (depending on the essential needs of the organization). It all depends on the type of business and its internal and external mandates. For example, a manufacturer of goods may need to have a certain amount of stock or reciprocal agreements with other similar manufacturers to meet contractual obligations in the case of a disaster in the production lines.

Disaster recovery (DR) efforts are those tasks and activities required to bring an organization back from contingency operations and reinstate regular operations. Typically, these functions act in concert: The same personnel, assets and (generally) activities will be used to conduct business continuity and disaster recovery efforts. They are often referred to in conjunction with the term business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR).