The State of Business Continuity Preparedness
Written by Phil on January 22, 2009 in Business Continuity, disaster preparedness.
Forrester Research and the Disaster Recovery Journal have partnered to field a number of market studies in business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) in order to gather data for company comparison and benchmarking, to guide research, and for the publication of best practices and recommendations for the industry.
The first study focused on gathering a baseline of company DR preparedness. This is the second study and focuses on gathering a baseline of company BC preparedness. Specifically, this study was designed to determine:
- To what extent have companies formalized ongoing BC management programs with executive level sponsorship?
- How frequently, if at all, do companies conduct a business impact analysis (BIA) and risk assessment (RA)?
- To what extent are business owners involved in the BC management life cycle?
- How well do companies document BC plans, keep plans up-to-date, and test plans? What types of tests do companies run, and how frequently do they run them? What tools do companies use to manage plans?
- What is the scope of BC plans? What threat scenarios do they address? Do they include components for workforce continuity? Do they include components for emergency communication?
- How many times have companies invoked their BC plans in the past five years? What was the cause? How successful was the invocation?
See The State of Business Continuity Preparedness by Stephanie Balaouras.
