What exactly is business continuity planning?

Business continuity planning means minimizing areas of risk where your company is vulnerable by identifying these factors and taking steps to reduce that vulnerability.

This means identifying your business' most likely risk factors and understanding these potential points of failure for a particular environment or business location, system, or event which could affect company operations, your employees or your bottom line (i.e. power, water, phone, etc.)

• Planning so that your business is able to respond to any emergency in an organized and rehearsed manner.
• Making sure that your business – at least the critical functions - can continue to operate regardless of the event.
• Identifying the people, places, things, communications, authorities and action plans needed for when a disaster strikes.
• Recognizing that planning ahead is not always event specific, but being prepared will enable you to respond more effectively and adapt to the specific circumstances of a situation more quickly.

Business continuity planning, as a process, is organized into 4 phases; Preparedness, Mitigation, Response, and Recovery.