Business Continuity Planning Checklist

Business Continuity Planning is an all encompassing, "umbrella" term covering both Disaster Recovery Planning and Business Resumption Planning for continuous and interrupted running of the operations. Business Continuity Planning is an essential element of information security. Business Continuity Planning Checklist is a way to ensure you have all those bases covered. Use Business Continuity Planning Checklist as a starting point but remember that your organization is different to all others so you will need to personalize it somewhat. Also, in this case we are just looking at the preparatory and beginning stage.

The following six factors are the critical aspects of effective Business Continuity Planning Checklist:

·       Business continuity planning should be conducted on an enterprise-wide basis

·       A thorough business impact analysis and risk assessment is the foundation of an effective Business Continuity Planning.

·       Business Continuity Planning is more than the recovery of the technology; it is the recovery of the business.

·       Business Continuity Planning is more than the recovery of the technology; it is the recovery of the business

·       The effectiveness of a Business Continuity Planning can only be validated through thorough testing.

·       A Business Continuity Planning should be periodically updated to reflect and respond to changes in the institution

If you are Business Continuity Planning Checklist starter you need to get a lot of preparatory actions in place to facilitate the ability for a quick response later on. These actions will include:

·       Perform backups

·       Business Continuity Planning Checklist includes electronic and paper files as well as vital publications. This may dovetail with your organization’s document retention plan, so the two tasks could be combined here. Don’t duplicate what you don’t need.

·       Move backups offsite

·       An offsite depository needs to be created and maintained as part of the DRP; at specified intervals, the old backup materials need to be replaced.

·       Update the DRP as needed

·       The Disaster Recovery Plan checklist must reflect changes in procedures, personnel, and the organization. This should be done annually, quarterly, or monthly depending on how frequently change happens.

·       Disaster Recovery Plan checklist  Document the backups for existing systems

·       Determine who makes the backups for existing systems; who holds them to offsite delivery; who is responsible for retrieval following a disaster; and who keeps track of the media and the naming conventions.

·       Document the backups for new systems

·       Do the same for the systems and processes that were created since the last regular update, especially any documentation for operation, data sources and vendors and information easily lost if not recorded at the time of inception.

·       Maintain contact lists

·       Every top-level manager should know: where their directors are and how to reach them quickly; and how to reach everyone in the department if they’re not in the office.

·       Maintain phone contact systems

·       Until an alternate worksite is operational or until the original workplace is back in order, virtually all communications will be by phone, especially for managers. Any changes to phone conferencing systems, login procedures, beeper and pager numbers, or PDA addresses need to be captured and put into the DRP at update time.

Good examples of  the Vendor Selection ,Disaster Recovery Plan checklist,  Business Continuity Planning Software tool's detailed worksheets (Criteria Ranking, Vendor, and Comparison) will help you assess the business continuity planning software available from various vendors so that your determination is based on the facts and issues most applicable to your organization's needs.

The Vendor Reference Questionnaire of Business Continuity Planning Checklist allows you to record important contact and demographic information on up to six separate references checklist. Find out how each reference rates the vendor(s) on 10 critical, technology-specific questions. When you’ve completed the data from all the references you’re contacting, the tool will pull the information into the Comparison worksheet for a side-by-side look at how their vendor ratings stack up.

A strategic checklist for business continuity is to see the issues that revolve around business continuity and disaster recovery in terms of technology alone. Strategic business thinkers, however, increasingly understand that much more is involved.