Business Continuity Planning Guides Collection

Business Continuity Planning (BCP) guides provide organizations with detailed information, advice, and instructions on developing, implementing, and maintaining an effective BCP. These guides can be valuable resources for organizations looking to enhance their resilience and ensure the continuity of critical operations during disruptions. Some notable BCP guides include:

• ISO 22301:2019 – Business Continuity Management Systems: This international standard provides a comprehensive framework for establishing, implementing, maintaining, and continually improving a business continuity management system (BCMS). It offers guidance on best practices, methodologies, and processes related to BCP.
• Business Continuity Institute (BCI) Good Practice Guidelines (GPG): The GPG is a comprehensive guide to best practices in business continuity and resilience. It is based on the Business Continuity Management (BCM) Lifecycle and covers various stages of BCP, from understanding the organization to embedding BCM in its culture.
• NIST SP 800-34 Rev. 1 – Contingency Planning Guide for Federal Information Systems: This guide, published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), provides detailed instructions on developing and maintaining contingency plans for IT systems, including integrating IT contingency planning with overall BCP efforts.
• Disaster Recovery Institute International (DRII) Professional Practices for Business Continuity Management: The DRII Professional Practices offer a framework for developing, implementing, and maintaining an effective business continuity program. They cover topics such as program initiation and management, risk assessment, business impact analysis, and incident response.
• Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Continuity Guidance Circular (CGC) 1 and 2: The FEMA CGC provides guidance on developing and maintaining continuity plans and programs for non-federal organizations, including state, local, tribal, and territorial governments and private sector organizations. The guidance covers essential elements of a continuity program, such as risk assessment, business impact analysis, and continuity strategies.
• Ready.gov Business Continuity Planning Suite: Developed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Ready.gov Business Continuity Planning Suite offers a set of tools, templates, and resources to help organizations develop a comprehensive BCP. These include a business continuity plan template, a business impact analysis worksheet, and a risk assessment matrix.

These guides offer valuable insights, advice, and best practices for organizations developing and maintaining a robust BCP. By leveraging these resources and adopting a systematic, structured approach to BCP, organizations can enhance their resilience and ensure the continuity of critical operations during disruptions.

Category: Business Continuity Planning Guides

The Business Continuity Planning Guides category within our CIO Reference Library is a curated collection of resources, articles, and insights designed to help CIOs and IT executives develop, implement, and maintain effective business continuity plans for their organizations. This category provides IT leaders with step-by-step guidance, practical tips, and proven methodologies to ensure the resilience, reliability, and recovery of their organization’s critical systems, processes, and operations during disruptions, disasters, or other incidents.

In this category, you will find valuable information on a wide range of topics related to business continuity planning guides, including:

• Developing a clear BCP strategy that aligns with your organization’s objectives, risk profile, and technology landscape.
• Conducting comprehensive risk assessments and business impact analyses to identify and prioritize critical systems, processes, and operations, as well as their dependencies and potential threats.
• Establishing recovery strategies and objectives, such as recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs), to guide your organization’s response to disruptions.
• Designing and implementing BCP plans that include clear roles, responsibilities, procedures, and resources for responding to incidents and restoring critical operations.
• Ensuring regular plan testing, maintenance, and updates to keep your BCP initiatives current, effective, and relevant in the face of changing risks, technologies, and business requirements.
• Integrating BCP efforts with other strategic initiatives and frameworks, such as IT service management, disaster recovery, and information security.
• Fostering a culture of preparedness, resilience, and continuous improvement within your organization to support effective BCP practices and response.

IT leaders can better understand the principles, techniques, and strategies underpinning effective BCP by exploring the Business Continuity Planning Guides category. This knowledge will enable you to follow expert guidance and implement best practices within your organization, ensuring that your critical systems, processes, and operations remain resilient, reliable, and recoverable in the face of disruptions, disasters, or other incidents.