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For many companies, a vital part of this infrastructure is an IT backbone of communications and computer systems that process orders, manage the supply chain, handle customer interaction, and perform other business functions. This backbone consists of servers, workstations, and critical communications links between sites. The BCP must address how the organization will protect these systems against risks identified during the strategy development phase. As with buildings and facilities, there are two main methods of providing this protection:

       Physically Hardening Systems You can protect systems against the risks by introducing protective measures such as computer-safe fire suppression systems and uninterruptible power supplies.

       Alternative Systems You can also protect business functions by introducing redundancy (either redundant components or completely redundant systems/communications links that rely on different facilities).

      These same principles apply to whatever infrastructure components serve your critical business processes—transportation systems, electrical power grids, banking and financial systems, water supplies, and so on.

      As organizations move many of their technology operations to the cloud, this doesn't reduce their reliance on physical infrastructure. Although the company may no longer operate the infrastructure themselves, they still rely on the physical infrastructure of their cloud service providers and should take measures to ensure they are comfortable with the level of continuity planning conducted by those providers. A disruption at a key cloud provider that affects one of the organization's own critical business functions can be just as damaging as a failure of the organization's own infrastructure.

Plan Approval and Implementation

      Once the BCP team completes the design phase of the BCP document, it's time to gain top-level management endorsement of the plan. If you were fortunate enough to have senior management involvement throughout the development phases of the plan, this should be a relatively straightforward process. On the other hand, if this is your first time approaching management with the BCP document, you should be prepared to provide a lengthy explanation of the plan's purpose and specific provisions.

       Senior management buy-in is essential to the success of the overall BCP effort.

      Plan Approval

If possible, you should attempt to have the plan endorsed by the top executive in your business—the chief executive officer, chairperson, president, or similar business leader. This move demonstrates the importance of the plan to the entire organization and showcases the business leader's commitment to business continuity. The signature of such an individual on the plan also gives it much greater weight and credibility in the eyes of other senior managers, who might otherwise brush it off as a necessary but trivial IT initiative.

      Plan Implementation

      Once you've received approval from senior management, it's time to dive in and start implementing your plan. The BCP team should get together and develop an implementation schedule that utilizes the resources dedicated to the program to achieve the stated process and provision goals in as prompt a manner as possible, given the scope of the modifications and the organization's attitude toward continuity planning.

      After fully deploying resources, the BCP team should supervise the design and implementation of a BCP maintenance program. This program ensures that the plan remains responsive to evolving business needs.

      Training and Education

      Training and education are essential elements of the BCP implementation. All personnel who will be involved in the plan (either directly or indirectly) should receive some sort of training on the overall plan, as well as their individual responsibilities.

      Everyone in the organization should receive at least a plan overview briefing. These briefings provide employees with the confidence that business leaders have considered the possible risks posed to the continued operation of the business and have put a plan in place to mitigate the impact on the organization should a disruption occur.

      People with direct BCP responsibilities should be trained and evaluated on their specific BCP tasks to ensure that they can complete them efficiently when disaster strikes. Furthermore, at least one backup person should be trained for every BCP task to provide redundancy in the event personnel are injured or cannot reach the workplace during an emergency.

      BCP Documentation

      Documentation is a critical step in the business continuity planning process. Committing your BCP methodology to paper provides several significant benefits:

       It ensures that BCP personnel have a written continuity document to reference in the event of an emergency, even if senior BCP team members are not present to guide the effort.

       It provides a historical record of the BCP process that will be useful to future personnel seeking to both understand the reasoning behind various procedures and implement necessary changes in the plan.

       It forces the team members to commit their thoughts to paper—a process that often facilitates the identification of flaws in the plan. Having the plan on paper also allows draft documents to be distributed to individuals not on the BCP team for a “sanity check.”

In the following sections, we'll explore some of the essential components of the written business continuity plan.

      Continuity Planning Goals

      First, the plan should describe the goals of continuity planning as set forth by the BCP team and senior management. These goals should be decided on at or before the first BCP team meeting and will most likely remain unchanged throughout the life of the BCP.

      The most common goal of the BCP is quite simple: to ensure the continuous operation of the business in the face of an emergency. Other goals may also be inserted in this section of the document to meet organizational needs. For example, you might have an objective that your customer call center experience no more than 15 consecutive minutes of downtime or that your backup servers be able to handle 75 percent of your processing load within one hour of activation.

      Statement of Importance

      The statement of importance reflects the criticality of the BCP to the organization's continued viability. This document commonly takes the form of a letter to the organization's employees, stating the reason that the organization devoted significant resources to the BCP development process and requesting the cooperation of all personnel in the BCP implementation phase.

      Here's where the importance of senior executive buy-in comes into play. If you can put out this letter under the signature of the chief executive officer (CEO) or an officer at a similar level, the plan will carry tremendous weight as you attempt to implement changes throughout the organization. If you have the signature of a lower-level manager, you may encounter resistance as you try to work with portions of the organization outside of that individual's direct control.

      Statement of Priorities

      The statement of priorities flows directly from the identify priorities phase of the business impact analysis. It simply involves listing the functions considered critical to continued business operations in a prioritized order. When listing these priorities, you should also include a statement that they were developed as part of the BCP process and reflect the importance of the functions to continued business operations in the event of an emergency and nothing more. Otherwise, the list of priorities could be used for unintended purposes and result in a political turf battle between competing organizations to the detriment of the business continuity plan.

      Statement

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