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Business Continuity Plan

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Customers are the life of a business, so contact with customers is a top priority.

Business continuity is much more than just a fancy word for "backup" — although some organizations treat it that way. A comprehensive business continuity plan (BCP) provides a roadmap for continuance and/or restoration of mission-critical functions during and after a disaster, such as a fire, flood, tornado or even a disease epidemic.Your BCP must be thought out, written down, and distributed to key personnel well ahead of any incident that could cause a disruption to your operations. Copies should be stored off-site — an obvious but often overlooked requirement. Here are 10 things a good BCP includes.
&#8212more&#8212Note: This information is available as a PDF download.
#1: Analysis of potential threats
Your company's response to a disaster will depend on both the nature and the extent of the disaster. Some threats, such as a tornado or flood, may physically destroy your IT infrastructure. Others, such as pandemic disease, affect human resources while leaving buildings and machinery intact. A cyberterrorism attack might bring down your network but not affect the functionality of the hardware or your personnel. A bombing may destroy both human life and network components. A power outage could render your equipment unusable, but do no lasting damage. Thus your plan should cover contingencies for as many threat types as possible.
#2: Areas of responsibility
A key component in any crisis management situation — which is what you have during and perhaps immediately after the disaster — is assignment of areas of responsibility and establishment of a chain of command. This is no time to have department heads squabbling about who has decision-making authority. And remember that some types of disasters may result in loss of personnel (or some of your staff may be on vacation

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