Business Continuity Management: Justification, Implementation & Testing

Information systems, both manual and automated, are essential to the survival of modern organizations, yet many firms do not have realistic, documented, and tested Business Continuity Management (BCM) Plans. 'Prudent Person' officer responsibility therefore demands that all executives assure that their organization can survive a natural or man-made disaster that destroys or disables their manual or automated information systems. This paper presents and illustrates the justification approach needed to sell, and the methodologies used to document, implement, and test a BCM. It points out that the traditional probability based 'Insurance' approach often leads to the incorrect result that the cost of a workable BCM exceeds the total costs incurred when a low probability disaster occurs.