Business Continuity Planning (BCP)

A BCP is a documented description of the actions to be taken, resources to be used and the procedures to be followed before, during and after an event that severely disrupts all or part of your business. Review of an existing BCP is carried out to evaluate the organisation's ability to continue data processing operations under adequate security protection in the event of an extended disruption. Further, assistance is also provided in development of a BCP in accordance with the needs of the organisation. We use structured methodology. This methodology deals with the identification and protection of critical business processes and resources to maintain an acceptable level of business, protecting these resources and preparing procedures to ensure the survival of the organisation in times of business disruption. The methodology follows a structured approach for the formulation of a business continuity plan.

The phases involved in a BCP process are:

• Business Requirements Analysis - In this phase, the client's business functions that are critical to the organisation's survival are identified. This is also referred to as "impact analysis".
• Detailed Requirements Definition - We identify, at a detailed level, all the resources that are required to support the critical business functions and application systems.
• Alternative Analysis - In this phase, we analyse and evaluate, using the requirements identified above, the recovery alternatives both internal and external to the client organisation. We select the most viable and cost effective alternative and recommend it for management approval.
• Business Continuity Plan preparation - In this phase, we identify and document the detailed tasks to be performed during recovery. We also address and document each staff's responsibilities during the plan activation process.
• Plan Implementation, Testing and Maintenance - This phase involves publication of written plans, staff training, plan testing and the development of ongoing plan maintenance procedures.
  
  Adherence to the stages, phases, tasks and steps ensures comprehensiveness and quality in the plan preparation process.

The project may be:

• Data processing recovery project - We emphasize on the recovery of systems following a disaster at the data centre. We focus on the applications, which run on the data centre and ensure its recovery. We do not review the business functions.
• Business continuity planning project - Whereas, a business continuity planning is much wider in its scope and it extends to each and every business function. An organisation must be aware of the implications of the loss of aspects of business other than the data centre, for example, loss of office areas, warehouses, plants and so on.