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Business continuity management is defined as the advanced planning and preparation of an organization to maintaining business functions or quickly resuming after a disaster has occurred.  It also involves defining potential risks including fire, flood, pandemics or cyber attacks. Business leaders plan to identify and address potential crises before they happen. Then testing those procedures to ensure that they work, and periodically reviewing the process to make sure that it is up to date. Risk comes in many forms. A Business Impact Analysis and a Threat & Risk Assessment should be performed.

A business can experience several types of crisis ranging from data breaches to executive misconduct. The goal of crisis management is to have a system in place to effectively address the coordinated response, resources, and internal and external communication requirements during and after the negative situation.  How you accomplish these tasks will impact your corporate reputation and recovery. Crisis planning is based on reasonable challenges your company may face and you need to identify those events that are most likely to occur in order to develop appropriate responses. All business are at risk of data breaches, customer service problems and loss of competitive advantages.

A lot of businesses have trouble sorting out the difference between Emergency Response vs Business Continuity when an incident occurs. In a nutshell, Emergency Response focuses on the safety and protection of life, assets, and the environment.  On the other hand, Business Continuity focuses on continuing the operations of the business until it can return back to normal. 

Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) are two of the most important parameters of a disaster recovery or data protection plan. These are objectives which can guide enterprises to choose an optimal data backup plan.

Recovery Point Objective (RPO) describes the interval of time that might pass during a disruption before the quantity of data lost during that period exceeds the Business Continuity Plan’s maximum allowable threshold or “tolerance.”

The Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is the duration of time and a service level within which a business process must be restored after a disaster in order to avoid unacceptable consequences associated with a break in continuity. In other words, the RTO is the answer to the question: “How much time did it take to recover after notification of business process disruption?“

Sometimes the threat doesn’t come from cyber attackers. Instead, it comes from natural disasters, office-system break downs or general wear and tear. Smart companies have multiple contingency plans in place to make sure the damage is limited. Critical to avoiding catastrophe is having a business continuity policy and disaster recovert plan in place.