The Cabinet Office - Business Continuity for Dummies

Business Continuity For Dummies

by Stuart Sterling, Brian Duddridge, Andrew Elliott, Michael Conway and Anna Payne

Business Continuity For Dummies

Published by
John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
The Atrium
Southern Gate
Chichester
West Sussex
PO19 8SQ
England

This edition first published 2012

2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, West Sussex.

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Introduction

Business continuity (BC) involves building resilience in your business: identifying its key products and services and the critical activities that underpin them, and devising strategies so that you can trade through a disruption and recover afterwards. We see BC as being a bit like New Year resolutions: go on a diet, do more exercise, eat more fruit you know the drill. People promise themselves theyre going to do these things because they know that they should be doing them and cant deny that they wont benefit from making the effort. But in the end normally, by 2 or 3 January they just dont do them. Its too hard, I cant be bothered, I dont have enough time... people use any number of excuses that dont really stack up.

Similarly, businesses know that they should be doing BC, and yes, believe it or not, would rather like to have it in their business. The problem is that people see BC as being too expensive and time-consuming, and the guidance available isnt aimed at smaller businesses.

But no longer. Although any size of business can use this book, we aim it specifically at small- and medium-sized enterprises (or SMEs). As the Prime Minister reminded people at the 2011 World Economic Forum, SMEs are the engines of job creation, and this has been the case for a long time. Their resilience and continuity is important for all sorts of different reasons, but most prominently to:

Provide a source of jobs.

Provide a market for goods and services.

Strengthen local communities.

Provide necessary economic flexibility through outsourcing.

Create and spread innovation.

Assist in re-invigorating the economy.

About This Book

We produced this guide to help SMEs introduce vital business continuity into their firms. We write especially with the small business in mind and keep coming back to the core principles: does this make sense for a small business; can a small business easily achieve this; can a business do this within a reasonable amount of time; and is it affordable for a small business?

In essence, we continually ensure that what were telling you is:

Accessible

Affordable

Achievable

Yet we havent produced something completely new that doesnt recognise previous developments in the area of BC; on the contrary! This work is sponsored by the Business Continuity Institute (BCI), the Emergency Planning Society (EPS) and the Cabinet Office, and supported by the British Standards Institution (BSI). Each of these organisations has made great steps forward in promoting the adoption and use of BC.

In recognition of this, we draw inspiration and thoughts from the following:

BCIs Good Practice Guidelines

British Standard for Business Continuity BS25999:2006, Parts 1 and 2

Cabinet Offices National Risk Register

Crisis Management Guidance and Good Practice PAS 200:2011

The content of this book was originally produced by the Emergency Planning Societys Business Continuity Professional Working Group and co-opted subject matter experts.