Business Continuity Management
- Why?
- How will it help?
- What Are the Risks I Face?
- What Can Be Done?
Factsheet Downloads
Business Continuity Management : What Are the Risks I Face?
Only a specific review of your business operation will identify the potential exposures to your operation that could cause severe disruption.
But some of the following questions might apply, or at least provide a guide to the areas that you should be thinking about (although there is an assumption that you have identified which functions are really critical to the provision of services and or product to your customers) . . . . .
Can your critical services / functions continue during a twenty four our power loss? What about a more prolonged outage?
What potential risks exist to the business in terms of its location, the premises, the computer systems, physical, IT, information and personnel security? Where potential exposures exist, what is in place to mitigate the impact of an incident?
Which of your business functions / processes continue without access to computer systems or telecommunications for periods between one day and one month? More importantly, which ones need immediate access, and is this possible in all cases? What is the real minimum tolerable outage ?
How would your critical business functions continue if their location was affected by an incident making it inaccessible for two days? How about a week? What if it were to be a month? Could you relocate the function to an alternative location? How many staff would be needed? Has any alternative location got the capacity, and the facilities / resources, required? What about home working? Has there been any consideration given to the potential need to access specialist applications, equipment or even stationary? Can any of this be achieved, and continued effectively, over the above timescales? Has this all been tested?
A Business Continuity Management strategy will provide the means to answer these questions, and all the other issues that might be specific to your operation.