Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is the process of establishing frameworks to ensure that critical business operations can continue running during a major disruption. BCP frameworks must be aligned with the ISO 22301 standard for societal security and business continuity management systems.
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ BUSINESS IMPACT ANALYSIS (BIA) │
└───────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────┘
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┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ CONTINUITY DESIGN PARAMETERS │
│ • Recovery Time Objective (RTO) Boundary │
│ • Recovery Point Objective (RPO) Constraint │
└───────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────┘
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┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ STRATEGIC WORK STREAMS │
│ • Multi-Site Database Replication │
│ • Alternative Workspace Configurations │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
The BCP framework requires completing a formal Business Impact Analysis (BIA) to map process dependencies and define two core recovery parameters:
- Recovery Time Objective (RTO): The maximum acceptable duration of downtime before a process must be restored to prevent significant financial or regulatory damage.
- Recovery Point Objective (RPO): The maximum acceptable volume of data loss measured in time (e.g., hours of transactions) that can occur during an outage before impacting operational continuity.