Business Continuity Planning

Business continuity planning (BCP) "identifies an organization's exposure to internal and external threats and synthesizes hard and soft assets to provide effective prevention and recovery for the organization, while maintaining competitive advantage and value system integrity”. It is also called business continuity and resiliency planning (BCRP). A business continuity plan is a roadmap for continuing operations under adverse conditions such as a storm or a crime. In the US, governmental entities refer to the process as continuity of operations planning (COOP).

Any event that could impact operations is included, such as supply chain interruption, loss of or damage to critical infrastructure (major machinery or computing/network resource). As such, risk management must be incorporated as part of BCP.

In December 2006, the British Standards Institution (BSI) released an independent standard for BCP — BS 25999-1. Prior to the introduction of BS 25999, BCP professionals relied on information security standard BS 7799, which only peripherally addressed BCP to improve an organization's information security procedures. BS 25999's applicability extends to all organizations. In 2007, the BSI published BS 25999-2 "Specification for Business Continuity Management", which specifies requirements for implementing, operating and improving a documented business continuity management system (BCMS).

In 2004, the United Kingdom enacted the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, instructing emergency services and local authorities to actively prepare for emergencies. Local authorities were given the legal obligation to actively lead promotion of business continuity practices in their respective jurisdictions.