Business Contingency Planning
What is a "Disaster"?
This may seem like a simple question, but, for the purposes of Business Contingency Planning the Definition is:
"Any condition that prevents you from performing your critical business functions in an acceptable period of time."
Business Continuity Management
Business Continuity Management is a management process that identifies potential impacts that threaten an organization and provides a framework for building resilience and the capability for an effective response and possible recovery if required. Business Continuity Management should be fully integrated into the organization as an embedded management process.
Business Continuity Management aims to improve an organization’s resilience. By identifying, in advance, the potential impacts of a wide variety of sudden disruptions to the organization’s ability to succeed. It should be able to prioritize the efforts of various specialists aiming to achieve resilience in areas such as security, facilities and IT.
Business Continuity Management is particularly concerned with developing organization-wide resilience allowing an organization to survive the loss of part or all of its operational capability. It should also look at surviving significant losses of resources such as staff or equipment. Because an organization’s resilience depends on its operational staff and management as well as technology and geographical diversity, this resilience should be developed throughout the organization.
The driver for this resilience is the responsibility that elected officials and senior management have for the long-term interests of staff, and all those who depend on the organizations services in some way.
“It won’t happen to us”, “We will cope – we always do”, “We are too big to fail”, “it has never happened here”, and “We are not a terrorist target” are frequent responses by organizations when questioned about their lack of preparedness.
While terrorist, fires, storms and floods capture the headlines almost 90% of organizations disastrous incidents are ‘quiet disasters’ which go unreported in the media but can have a devastating impact on an organization’s ability to function. In managing any event, a successful outcome is judged by both the technical response and the perceived competence of the event management.
What is contained in a Business Recovery Plan?
- Names and Telephone Numbers
- Defined roles and responsibilities
- Escalation procedures
- Relocation Information
- Vital records and data location
- Critical Vendor Information
- Media Information
The Division of Information Systems and Communications provides a sample
Business
Contingency Outline
Contacts for assistance and resource information
Dan Swearingen, Business Continuity Management Director (785) 296-7422
Cheryl Shaughnessy, Business Continuity Coordinator (785) 296-1923