Scalar Business Continuity Practice Introduction
Posted on Thu, Aug 05, 2010
Author: Scott Wilson Certified Business Continuity Professional (CBCP)
Business Continuity has grown in to a large and complex essential business practice.Everyone is doing it in some form; unfortunately most are not doing it well. Typically Business Continuity is confused with Disaster Recovery. This is not correct. Disaster Recovery is a smaller part of Business Continuity. Here are some standard definitions of the two:
BUSINESS CONTINUITY is an ongoing program supported and funded by executive staff to ensure business continuity requirements are assessed, resources are allocated and, recovery and continuity strategies and procedures are completed and tested.
DISASTER RECOVERY: Activities and programs designed to return the entity to an acceptable condition. The ability to respond to an interruption in services by implementing a disaster recovery plan to restore an organization's critical business functions.
As you can see Disaster Recovery fits in to the overall Business Continuity Management (BCM) Program as a planned response to an unplanned event. These can include Natural Disasters, IT failures or organizational challenges.
Understanding how all the pieces of the BCM program fit together can be a challenge if only addressed from an IT perspective. History has shown business interruption and disasters can occur at any time and be in many different forms. So for a business to survive and possibly thrive in an uncertain future, better Business Continuity is KEY.
There is a lot of information out there for practitioners of BCM programs, however finding and understanding this information and deciphering how it is relevant to your organization is always a challenge.
So as an introduction to this blog I invite you to review the information posted here regularly and comment on the content. With comments I can respond with specific answers to your comments or questions and help provide a better understanding of the BCM landscape and possibly address your concerns.
If you have a specific question regarding anything Business Continuity or Disaster Recovery please feel free to contact me and I would be happy to investigate it and post it to this blog.