PLAN
MAINTENANCE
The world is full of closed businesses that had a dusty, unused Business Continuity Plan on a bookshelf somewhere. Plan Maintenance is the part of the overall process that ensures all of your planning efforts stay relevant as business conditions change, and stay front-of-mind for management and staff. Practice makes permanent.
Develop Drill & Test Scenarios
Using threats identified while conducting the Business Impact Analysis, we can begin to create drills and exercises for each of the viable threats. These drill and exercise plans are then used to familiarize responders with the proper response procedures and to identify incorrect response actions that need to be corrected.
Conduct Training
Training and awareness activities are crucial to the adoption, implementation, and ongoing success of your organization's business continuity and disaster recovery programs. A real emergency is the wrong time to figure out how to respond.
Determine Periodic Review Cycle
Business conditions change rapidly. Whether it is employee turnover, a change in IT systems, or simply a change in the threats themselves, the pace of transformation necessitates a cycle of routine evolution of your Business Continuity Plan. Review cycles are typically annual but should be determined based on the pace of change in your organization and your business environment. An obsolete plan is of no help to anyone.
Update as Conditions Change
Despite having a routine review cycle, don't wait until an annual review to change your plan if business changes occur. A merger/acquisition, major system upgrades, office relocation or any of a million other actions can immediately render your plan ineffective. An update has to be considered part of the organizational change process.