Business Continuity Management Requirements for 2022
After the last couple of years, most organisations have big business continuity management goals in 2022. But goals are one thing – execution is something else, altogether. How to bring your goals to fruition this new year? Start out with these business continuity management requirements.
Where do business continuity management requirements fit in?
Business continuity serves the purpose of minimising the financial, legal, regulatory, reputational, and other material consequences arising from a disruption to your critical business operations. Those operations are the functions, resources, and assets that, if disrupted, are likely to have a material impact on revenue, profitability, reputation, etc.
Well-executed business continuity requirements, on the other hand, are components that help ensure that your critical business operations can be maintained or recovered in a timely fashion, in the event of a disruption.
Generic business continuity management requirements
It falls, then, to senior leadership to ensure that their organisations comply. But comply with what?
Every business is different. Working in tandem with the Continuity function and senior leadership, individual business lines typically craft requirements for their respective functions, based on their individual risk profiles.
Still not sure where to start? International best-practice standard ISO 22301 has been used as the model for many sector-specific business continuity frameworks. The standard highlights the following generic business continuity management requirements; the requirements include:
- General requirements. Establish a business continuity policy that: a) is appropriate to the purpose of the organisation; b) provides a framework for setting business continuity objectives; c) includes a commitment to satisfy applicable requirements; d) includes a commitment to continual improvement of the business continuity management system (BCMS).
- Business continuity policy requirements. Demonstrate leadership and commitment with respect to the BCMS by a) ensuring that the business continuity policy and business continuity objectives are established and compatible with the strategic direction of the organisation.
- Business impact analysis requirement. Use the process for analysing business impacts to determine business continuity priorities and requirements. The process shall: a) define the impact types and criteria relevant to the organisation’s context; b) identify the activities that support the provision of products and services; c) use the impact types and criteria for assessing the impacts over time resulting from the disruption of these activities.
- Recovery requirements. Have documented processes to restore and return business activities from the temporary measures adopted during and after a disruption.
- Notification and planning requirements. Implement and maintain a response structure that will enable timely warning and communication to relevant interested parties. That structure shall provide plans and procedures to manage the organisation during a disruption. Those plans and procedures shall be used when required to activate business continuity solutions; and the organisation shall identify and document business continuity plans and procedures based on the output of the selected strategies and solutions. Those procedures shall: a) be specific regarding the immediate steps that are to be taken during a disruption; b) be flexible to respond to the changing internal and external conditions of a disruption; c) focus on the impact of incidents that potentially lead to disruption; d) be effective in minimising the impact through the implementation of appropriate solutions; e) assign roles and responsibilities for tasks within them.
Haven’t yet made business continuity a priority? This needs to be the year you finally make it happen, by engaging in the business continuity planning process and building a list of business continuity management requirements with which to comply.
Having business requirements isn’t the end. Many organisations have elaborate requirements yet still fail the compliance test. How to operationalise compliance? Business continuity planning software like Noggin for Business Continuity will help. Don’t take our word for it, though. Demo the solution for yourself.