Business Continuity Management: A Standards-Based Approach

ABSTRACT Business enterprises are increasingly realizing the importance of business continuity management (BCM). Availability BS 25999 Standard has facilitated a consistent methodology that organizations can follow in designing their BCM System. This paper intends to provide a conceptual understanding of BCM right from BCM Policy to BCM maturity by describing the steps involved in the implementation of BCM Standard – BS 25999 – to ensure business continuity in the event of an outage. The key BCM tasks have been categorized into three phases of business continuity – Pre-event Preparation, Event Management, and Post-event Continuity. This paper also highlights some of the challenges experienced by the author in carrying out Risk Assessment and Business Impact Analysis. The Business Continuity Maturity Model® of Virtual Corporation is provided (with their permission) as a tool to strengthen business continuity maturity or organizations.