business continuity (BC)

Business continuity(BC) is a strategic approach to resuming or continuing business operations in crisis situations. The aim is to minimize business interruptions, production downtimes or other economic damage caused by the failure of IT operations as far as possible.

Business continuity ensures that the company can continue to produce and sell its products and services on a continuous basis in the event of internal or external threats, accidents, fire, power outages, storms or attacks by malware. Part of business continuity is disaster recovery( DR), which involves the short-term restoration of data assets after a system failure. While disaster recovery focuses on getting an organization back up and running as quickly as possible after a service interruption or outage, business continuity is about ensuring that functionality is maintained as much as possible in the event of a disruption.

The Business Continuity Plan( BCP) is a contingency plan that considers all possible unplanned interruptions to business and production operations. It should show the key contact information, the procedure and policies, the emergency procedure, a checklist and the flowchart for the course of action. It should specify how business can be restored after an interruption or whether production must be outsourced. For example, if production facilities are destroyed by fire, it must be determined whether the production hall and production facility will be rebuilt or moved to another location. The business continuity plan could consider various disaster scenarios for this purpose, taking into account the various aspects such as rebuilding time, relocation and relocation costs, and more.

The risks for unplanned disruption can be many. They can be due to human error, cybercrime or natural events.