Business continuity planning

Business continuity planning (or business continuity and resiliency planning) is the process of creating systems of prevention and recovery to deal with potential threats to a company.

Any event that could negatively impact operations is included in the plan, such as supply chain interruption, loss of or damage to critical infrastructure (major machinery or computing /network resource). As such, BCP is a subset of risk management.In the US, government entities refer to the process as continuity of operations planning (COOP).

In December 2006, the British Standards Institution (BSI) released an independent standard for BCP — BS 25999-1. Prior to the introduction of BS 25999, BCP professionals relied on information security standard BS 7799, which only peripherally addressed BCP to improve an organization's information security procedures. BS 25999's applicability extends to all organizations. In 2007, the BSI published BS 25999-2 "Specification for Business Continuity Management", which specifies requirements for implementing, operating and improving a documented business continuity management system (BCMS).

Business continuity management is standardized across the UK by British Standards (BS) through BS 25999-2:2007 and BS 25999-1:2006. BS 25999-2:2007 business continuity management is the British Standard for business continuity management across all organizations. This includes industry and its sectors. The standard provides a best practice framework to minimize disruption during unexpected events that could bring business to a standstill. The document gives a practical plan to deal with most eventualities – from extreme weather conditions to terrorism, IT system failure, and staff sickness.

This document was superseded in November 2012 by the British standard BS ISO22301:2012, the current standard for business continuity planning.

In 2004, following crises in the preceding years, the UK government passed the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 (The Act). This provides the legislation for civil protection in the UK: Businesses need to have continuity planning measures in place in order to survive and continue to thrive whilst working towards keeping the incident as minimal as possible.

The Act was separated into two parts: Part 1 focuses on local arrangements for civil protection, establishing a statutory framework of roles and responsibilities for local responders. Part 2 focused on emergency powers, establishing a modern framework for the use of special legislative measures that might be necessary to deal with the effects of the most serious emergency.

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