Sidestep Disasters with a Business Continuity Plan

by Judith M. Myerson, President/Owner (October 2009)

You need to have a plan in place if a risk assessment shows that the likelihood of an emergency event (e.g., severe storms or earthquakes) occurring is high. A business continuity plan allows an organization to minimize the consequences of a disaster and continue normal business functions afterward.

Categories: Compliance, Risk Management, Strategy

Key Concept

Business impact analysis looks at how individual business units would be affected after a significant interruption of the computing and communication services that the organization needs for continuous compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley.

Business continuity is essential to continuing business functions in the event of an emergency so you can comply with Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulations. Using a business continuity plan, you can configure your SAP system running on SAP NetWeaver Application Server to work with a business continuity plan on critical operations. This applies to SAP ERP, SAP BusinessObjects GRC solutions, and third-party products you have purchased for integration with your SAP system.

Before you develop and test the plan, you must ensure that you assess the risks adequately, reduce the frequency of risk events to an acceptable level, and minimize the severity of the consequences if risk events occur.

I’ll show you what you should include in your business continuity plan, including:

Business impact analysis
Business continuity plan objectives
Recovery time and point objectives
Performance criteria

I’ll finish with a discussion of control methods you can use.

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