Business Resumption Planning, Research Paper Example

Organizations may be exposed to risks due to lack of continuity planning, disaster planning and testing. Implementation of a business continuity program, BCP is therefore an important consideration in perpetuation of crucial processes of business as well as information system (Leo, 2008). The contribution of this initiative is to enhance recovery from unpremeditated interruptions of business processes in the organization. An effective business continuity program must account for continuity planning, disaster planning and testing. This can be achieved through synchronization of the business continuity program with disaster recovery plan, DRP in information technology that will facilitate effective recovery from manmade and natural risks that may include floods, fire, cyber attacks, DoS attack and virus infection (Andrew, 2011). Business managers in an organization who are able to implement continuity planning, disaster planning, and testing and best practices in their business operations are likely to achieve consistent success in their businesses. The work team in the organization gets the relevant skills in creating as well as following suitable work plans and learns how to apply standard process of continuity planning, disaster planning, and testing that facilitate effective risk mitigation, handling change as well as issues. Achievements of risk mitigation are facilitated by networking through soliciting assistance from top firms that have previously led the industry in continuity planning, disaster planning, and testing.

In many organizations, human resource professionals proclaim their aspirations of becoming more strategic but their ultimate failure is attributed to lack of a comprehensive program to address continuity planning, disaster planning, and testing. Business continuity planning is therefore a crucial tool in the organization that facilitates addressing recent events facing the business. Organizations have the potentials of recovery from hazards if only they have implemented an effective business continuity planning prior to the occurrence of the hazard. Some disasters are so powerful that they force the organization out of business (Harney, 2004).  Very few companies put a lot of weight on the monitoring and managing of risks as a routine activity through continuity planning, disaster planning, and testing after implementing the investments. the absence of a formal process of continuity planning, disaster planning and testing consequently leads to a potential exposure of the business to unnecessary and supplementary risks that consequently carries direct impact on the level of performance in the existing investment. In some cases, huge disruptions in business processes may arise out of a situation of lack of continuity planning, disaster planning and testing.

Continuity planning, disaster planning and testing play a crucial role in business processes in terms of transparency along with continuous operations. With increased reliance on technology in many business, the strategies allied to continuity planning, disaster planning and testing are becoming increasingly crucial and imperative. Much emphasis has been accorded to information technology and services of communication in the business in the process of supply chain management, transactions and communications with the customers. As a result, any instances of loss of information due to a disaster cannot be tolerated in the organization (Andrew, 2011). Designing an implementation of an effective continuity planning, disaster planning and testing in the organization must account for the following considerations.

• The specific types of risks confront the business such as hackers, natural disasters and threats of terrorism
• Potential effects of such risks to the business
• In cases of destruction of hard copies of the financial documents, is it possible to prove payments made or received in the business
• Recovery strategies
• Duration of time anticipated to achieve recovery, associated cost of recovery and the effectiveness of applicable strategy
• The needs of employees
• Efficiency in data recovery and systems while the operations of the business are uninterrupted
• Prevention and minimizing the effects brought by a disaster
• Measures of improving the security of a system and improving testing for penetration.

Risks that are attributed to lack of continuity planning, disaster planning and testing does not exclusively address natural disasters in isolation as potential threat to the operations of the business. Other threats such as hackers have potentials of undermining the entire operations of the business (Andrew, 2011). It is therefore imperative that, organization management consider effective strategies to address such threats through results that have been generated from processes of risk analysis as well as management activities that facilitate adoption of focused, security testing approaches that are tailored for specific organization such as vulnerability assessment along with testing potential penetration of the organizations network infrastructure.

Any incident that may arise resulting to the closure of the entire network in the organization must be addressed effectively and the employees must be given appropriate strategies for accessing the data along with the appropriate applications in the most secure and timely manner (Dimattia, 2001). This calls for the adoption of information management solutions in the organization that are responsible for the automation of the manual network in the procedures of management. However, available statistics indicate that, a great number of organizations have been adamant in implementation of an effective contingency plan to address such threats.

References

Andrew, H., (2011). Definitive Handbook of Business Continuity Management, 3rd Ed.,  FBCI, Editor John Wiley ISBN 978-0-470-67014-9.

Dimattia, S., (2001). Planning for Continuity. Library Journal, 32–34.

Harney, J., (2004). Business continuity and disaster recovery: Back up or shut down. AIIM E-Doc Magazine, 18(4), 42–48.

Leo, A. W., (2008). Business Resumption Planning, 2^nd Ed., ISBN 9780849314599.