Business Continuity Plan

Business continuity plan (BCP) is documentation outlining how an enterprise will continue operating when it faces unplanned disruptions in service. BCP comprises of the disaster recovery plan and contains contingencies for business partners, business resources, human resource, assets, and business processes among all other aspects of the business that may be affected (Blyth et al., 2018). BCP contains checklist that comprises of data backups, supplies and equipment, and backup site locations (Infobase, & WatchIT (Firm), 2018). Besides, plan administrators are identified in the BCP and backup site providers, key personnel, and emergency responders’ contact information are included. Thus the plan contains detailed strategies on how operations of the business can be maintained both in long-term and short-term outages (Clark, 2016). The BCP will address business continuity, business recovery, contingency planning, disaster recovery, and related activities.

The vital element of the BCP is the disaster recovery plan which contains strategies for managing IT disruptions to mobile devices, personal computers, network, and servers. The disaster recovery plan covers the reestablishment of office productivity and enterprise software to meet business needs (Blyth et al., 2018). The BCP addresses three aspects of business continuity for key processes and applications. The three aspects are high availability, continuous operations, and disaster recovery (Clark, 2016). High availability is the capability and the processes that a business has access regardless of failures in physical facilities and operations. Concerning continuous operation, BCP ensures things run continuously during disruptions and planned outages like planned maintenance and scheduled backups (Wold, 2018). On the other hand, disaster recovery establishes the way in which data center can be recovered in a different site if disaster cause destruction of the primary site or makes it inoperable (Infobase, & WatchIT (Firm), 2018). Thus, BCP is importance for enterprises because it identifies and addresses resiliency synchronization between IT infrastructure, applications, and business processes. 

References 

Blyth, M., Abrams, B., & Gildan Media Corporation. (2018). Business continuity management: Building an effective incident management plan. New York: Gildan Audio.

Clark, R. (2016). Business Continuity and the Pandemic Threat. Ely: IT Governance Publishing.

Infobase,, & WatchIT (Firm). (2018). Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity “Best Practices”.Wold, G. H. (2018). Business continuity preparedness.