Planning and Validation Process
Your business has great value to you, your staff, stockholders, customers, suppliers, and vendors. In order to insure your business has adequately addressed potential impacts, BCP can assist you to develop your Business Plan with the following Contingency Planning and Plan Validation Processes:
Project Assessment & Initiation
- Obtain management approval and designated project champion
- Define project scope
- Identify external requirements: legal, industry, shareholders, etc.
- Define critical business function criteria
- Define project planning and control process
Perform Risk Assessment
- Enumerate probable disaster scenarios
- Evaluate vulnerabilities due the disaster scenarios
- Review currently implemented disaster mitigation procedures
- Evaluate emergency response procedures
Business Process Impact Analysis
- Identify critical business processes, staff (and skills), applications, data, equipment, etc.
- Determine disaster / interruption Impact on business processes
- Identify internal and external dependencies continuity assumptions
- Define Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) requirements
- Identify critical function regulatory and effectiveness controls
Contingency Plan Development
- Review service level, contract and other supporting continuity agreements
- Define disaster recovery teams, roles and responsibilities and authority authorizations
- Develop notification and Plan activation and de-activation procedures
- Develop first response procedures
- Identify disaster recovery alternatives
- Formulate strategies based on optimum cost-benefit and risk assessment
- Review strategies with recovery teams, management, suppliers and customers for approval
- Develop detailed critical function recovery procedures
- Define Public Authority & community interface procedures
- Ensure appropriate Plan information confidentiality
Plan Preparedness Validation
- Conduct Plan "Walk-Throughs" and "Tabletops"
- Develop and obtain approval for test plans and objectives
- Perform test validation exercises
- Evaluate test results and coordinate Plan change requirements
- Implement Plan process improvements based on test results
- Report validation exercise results
Plan Maintenance
- Develop staff performance and procedure metrics supporting Plan objectives
- Define Plan audit metrics
- Develop a Plan maintenance process
- Develop distribution and change control procedures
- Consolidate Plan revision information
- Review Plan change requests and implement as required
- Distribute Plan updates
- Integrate updates and changes into the next validation exercise
- Recommend current operational procedures and mitigation modifications as required
Plan Awareness and Training
- Develop a Corporate Awareness Program
- Provide Business Contingency Planning training