ASIS Proceeds with New U.S. BC Standard
Early in October, ASIS International hosted a planning meeting with business continuity professionals from more than a dozen organizations to discuss its initiative to develop a business continuity management (BCM) standard, for ultimate approval by ANSI (American National Standards Institute). Among the organizations represented were the Disaster Recovery Institute International, Association of Contingency Planners, the Business Continuity Institute and its U.S. Chapter BCI-USA, which commented on the proposed ASIS standards project registered with ANSI.
ASIS held the meeting due to some initial concerns over the development and application of a new BCM standard, and compliance issues with ANSI’s procedural requirements. The ASIS-proposed Business Continuity Management American National Standard would include auditable criteria for preparedness, crisis management, business and operational continuity and disaster management.
ASIS sought input from business continuity professionals to develop potential membership on the technical committee that would draft and critique the new standard. ASIS stated its goal was not to infringe on the credibility of current BCM practitioners or turn BCM into a subset of security management, but to utilize its position as an ANSI-accredited Standards Development Organization (SDO) to lead the effort of providing its members, and the business continuity community at large, a standard it believes is genuinely needed. I
The consensus opinion of the participants was that the meeting was a productive step toward the development of a new standard that could be both auditable and scalable. The compelling need for the standard was unanimously confirmed. Most participants agreed that while other standards, such as NFPA 1600, already existed and provided value to the business continuity community, future needs of the community were not met since they were not auditable, were partial to certain industry segments or did not promote a holistic view of BCM, including the wide range of disciplines today’s BCM programs have to consider.
Next steps include:
- Broad-based outreach to establish the technical committee to draft the new standard
- Commence work on the new standard by November 15, 2008
- Ensure procedural requirements of ASIS and ANSI are met.
Tags: Business Continuity Management, Business continuity standards
