Business Continuity Testing

Business Continuity Testing

Once a business continuity plan has been developed, it must be subjected to rigorous business continuity testing.

The business coninuity testing process itself, must be properly planned and should be carried out in a suitable environment, to reproduce authentic conditions in so far as this is feasible.

Test your Business Conitinuity Plan

The Plan must be tested by those persons who would undertake those activities if the situation being tested occurred in reality.

The test procedures should be documented and the results recorded. This is important to ensure that feedback is obtained for fine tuning the Plan.

Equally, it is important to audit both the plan itself, and the contingency and back up arrangements supporting it. No short cut can be made here!

This stage is dependent upon the development of the plan and the successful testing and audit of the plans activities.

It is necessary that all personnel must be made aware of the plan and be aware of its contents and their own related duties and responsibilities.

Again, it is important that all personnel take the disaster recovery planning seriously, even if the events which would trigger the Plan seem remote and unlikely.

Obtain feedback from staff in order to ensure that responsibilities and duties are understood, particularly those which require close dependency on actions being taken by others

Maintain your Plan

Business continuity testing must always be kept up to date and applicable to deal with current business circumstances.

This means that any changes to the business process or changes to the relative importance of each part of the business process must be properly reflected within the plan.

Someone must be assigned responsibility for ensuring that the plan is maintained and updated regularly and should therefore ensure that information concerning changes to the business process are properly communicated.

Any changes or amendments made to the plan must be fully tested.

Personnel should also be kept abreast of such changes in so far as they affect their duties and responsibilities. .

The business continuity plan must always be kept up to date and applicable to current business circumstances.

This means that any changes to the business process or changes to the relative importance of each part of the business process must be properly reflected within the plan.

Any changes or amendments made to the plan must be fully tested. Personnel should also be kept abreast of such changes in so far as they affect their duties and responsibilities. .

The management of the organization have a responsibility to recover from such incidents in the minimum amount of time, with minimum disruption and at minimum cost.

This requires careful preparation and business continuity testing and planning.

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