Short description
Business continuity is something of a mystery to a great many people involved in running organisations. The majority are not actually required either by law or by anybody else to demonstrate any form of business continuity arrangements and so business continuity management (BCM) has not been seen as a priority for these organisations.
Long description
Business continuity is something of a mystery to a great many people involved in running organisations today. The majority are not actually required either by law or by anybody else to demonstrate any form of business continuity arrangements and so business continuity management (BCM) has not, until recently, been seen as a priority for these organisations. But the world is changing. The seemingly greater number of threats to organisations' ability to continue doing what they do and the increasingly sophisticated approaches to corporate governance, risk management and corporate and social responsibility are all helping to fuel the growing need for organisations to demonstrate and provide assurance that should some interruptive incident occur, they have done everything reasonable to minimise disruption to the continued supply of products or services, in which they are engaged.The increasing levels of competition not only in the UK and Europe, but from around the world mean that in the commercial world letting customers down as a result of what would have previously been seen as 'not your fault', carries increasingly higher penalties as business can often be lost for good. Before the introduction of BS 25999 it was arguably not worth while for organisations to invest in a BCM programme. Although we have yet to see an international standard (ISO) for business continuity management, there is every reason to believe that the principles of BS 25999 will be largely reflected in the eventual ISO, whenever it emerges. It is likely to take at least 12 months for most organisations to develop and implement a worthwhile BCM system and with today's competitive pressures the only really sensible path is to have implemented such a system before it is formally demanded by customers, regulators or even the law.As with British and international standards in many other management disciplines, BS 25999 is the only benchmark by which others can judge that an organisation's BCM arrangements are fit for purpose.