Business continuity planning (BCP) is the process of ensuring the continuous operation of your business before, during, and after a disaster event. It's focused on business continuation and it ensures that all services that the business provides or critical functions that the business performs are still carried out in the wake of the disaster. To ensure that all critical business services and functions are still operable, the organization needs to take into account the most common threats to their critical functions and also consider any associated vulnerabilities. Our BCP are developed based on are based on NIST guidelines.

At Parallel, when we develop a BCP, we think from an adversarial mindset and often simulate attacks to identify weakness and study the impact any critical vulnerability can have and add those to the scope as well.

Having a well researched BCP documented, would drastically minimize downtime and achieve sustainable improvements in availability, IT disaster recovery, corporate crisis management capabilities and regulatory compliance.

Our BCP Development Process

• Develop the contingency planning policy statement. A formal policy provides the authority and guidance necessary to develop an effective contingency plan
• Conduct the business impact analysis (BIA). The BIA helps identify and prioritize information systems and components critical to supporting the organization’s mission/business processes.
• Identify preventive controls. Measures taken to reduce the effects of system disruptions can increase system availability and reduce contingency life cycle costs.
• Create contingency strategies. Thorough recovery strategies ensure that the system may be recovered quickly and effectively following a disruption.
• Develop an information system contingency plan. The contingency plan should contain detailed guidance and procedures for restoring a damaged system unique to the system’s security impact level and recovery requirements.
• Ensure plan testing, training, and exercises. Testing validates recovery capabilities, whereas training prepares recovery personnel for plan activation and exercising the plan identifies planning gaps; combined, the activities improve plan effectiveness and overall organization preparedness.
• Ensure plan maintenance. The plan should be a living document that is updated regularly to remain current with system enhancements and organizational changes.