Business continuity may be defined as "the capability of an organization to continue the delivery of products or services at pre-defined acceptable levels following a disruptive incident",[1] and business continuity planning[2][3] (or business continuity and resiliency planning) is the process of creating systems of prevention and recovery to deal with potential threats to a company.[4] In addition to prevention, the goal is to enable ongoing operations before and during execution of disaster recovery.[5] Business continuity is the intended outcome of proper execution of both business continuity planning and disaster recovery.
Several business continuity standards have been published by various standards bodies to assist in checklisting ongoing planning tasks.[6]
Business continuity requires a top-down approach to identify an organisation's minimum requirements to ensure its viability as an entity. An organization's resistance to failure is "the ability ... to withstand changes in its environment and still function".[7] Often called resilience, it is a capability that enables organizations to either endure environmental changes without having to permanently adapt, or the organization is forced to adapt a new way of working that better suits the new environmental conditions.[7]
- ^ BCI Good Practice Guidelines 2013, quoted in Mid Sussex District Council, Business Continuity Policy Statement, published April 2018, accessed 19 February 2021
- ^ "How to Build an Effective and Organized Business Continuity Plan". Forbes. June 26, 2015.
- ^ "Surviving a Disaster" (PDF). American Bar.org (American Bar Association). 2011. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-09.
- ^ Elliot, D.; Swartz, E.; Herbane, B. (1999) Just waiting for the next big bang: business continuity planning in the UK finance sector. Journal of Applied Management Studies, Vol. 8, No, pp. 43–60. Here: p. 48.
- ^ Alan Berman (March 9, 2015). "Constructing a Successful Business Continuity Plan". Business Insurance Magazine.
- ^ "Business Continuity Plan". United States Department of Homeland Security. Archived from the original on 7 December 2018. Retrieved 4 October 2018.
- ^ a b Ian McCarthy; Mark Collard; Michael Johnson (2017). "Adaptive organizational resilience: an evolutionary perspective". Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability. 28: 33–40. Bibcode:2017COES...28...33M. doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2017.07.005.