Business Continuity Planning

STEPS FOR BUILDING YOUR BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLAN: 1. Understand your business - identify critical functions that need to continue in order for your business to operate and how soon you must be back in operation 2. Hazard identification and risk assessment - what hazards pose the greatest threat to your company? 3. Mitigation strategy - what actions should you take to reduce your risk? 4. Recovery strategy - what needs to happen in order for your business to resume operations? How can you make that happen? 5. Developing the business continuity plan - provides an outline for a comprehensive BCP for your company 6. Writing the plan - gives you guidance for completing the plan 7. Implementing the plan - discusses ways to test or exercise the plan before a disaster and evaluate and revise the plan when necessary. RECOVERY AND MITIGATION: While the business continuity plan is organized around the four phases of emergency management - mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery - the rationale behind preparing a plan is basic. To stay in business an owner must ensure that his or her operation is: * Disaster Resistant - able to withstand the effects of whatever hazard may strike * Disaster Resilient - able to rebound economically from a disaster and able to take advantage of post-disaster market opportunities. There are three periods of recovery: 1. The immediate emergency period when recovery actions focus on re-entry, crisis communications, safety measures and emergency repairs. For businesses which can afford no down time, you will need to develop a continuity of operations plan. 2. During the short range restoration period, you will focus on damage assessment, restoration of services and employee support. 3. The long range restoration period identifies a strategy for long-term recovery including state and federal disaster assistance and continued employee support. Mitigation involves developing strategies to reduce loss. Minimizing risk is done by: * Protecting your employees and customers * Having adequate insurance * Hardening your facility (reinforcing the roof, window protection, fire extinguishers, etc.) * Protecting your data (back-up files, hot sites, etc.) * Communicating with vendors, customers and suppliers and * Employee support programs