Businesses today are heavily relying upon Information Technology (IT) and they are expected to continue operating regardless of what is happening around them. Terrorist attacks (September 11th 2001), natural disasters (earthquake) or a power outage (northeast power outage of 2003) can prevent companies from continuing to provide services to their customers and could affect trust between the customer and business in the long term. Such an event could bring down the company, possibly affecting everyone connected in its organization. “Business continuity (BC) refers to maintaining business functions or quickly resuming them in the event of a major disruption.” (Tittel, 2013) An organization creates a plan that will contain instructions on how to continue in lieu of an activating event. The military has simple contingency plans for communications called “PACER”. (P) Primary, (A) Alternate, (C) Contingency, (E) Emergency and (R) Redundancy. Every unit has these plans whether it is during combat operations or back at their home base. The best way to establish your business continuity plan is to understand your organization and what areas are vulnerable if certain systems are lost, such as a loss of electricity. The plan must cover short term, long term and finally the recovery from the event. Every company will have their own steps in creating a continuity plan. Some of the basic steps include: (1) Identifying the scope of the plan. There should be multiple plans for different events you can’t only have one plan for one event. (2) Identify key business areas. Can we survive without these branches of the organization but make it with these. (3) Identify Critical functions. Once you have decided which parts of your company you will need now break down that portion to what functions that branch will require to stay relevant. (4) Determine acceptable downtime for each critical function. You may not be able to maintain multiple areas at once create a schedule that will run certain areas at a time while shutting others down. (5) Maintain operations. Short term and long term operations. What will be needed? Simple items like a checklist and running rehearsals can go a long ways with planning for a disaster. There should be people put in charge of certain key areas like supplies that will be needed and only used in the event of a disaster. It is the small things that can make a larger impact during such a crisis. A great way to ensure that everyone under stands the continuity plan is to run a simulation. Sure written down on paper and getting a nod from everyone that they understand can be reassuring for some but in the event of a serious disaster how can you be sure. The simulation should be done in phases beginning with a table-top exercise. The table-top exercise is usually consisting of department heads put in a room to discuss any gaps in their plans. Next would be the walk through with the department heads, just to give a basic overview at each point. Last is the actual simulation which involves everyone. Last step is Disaster Recovery, which when talking about continuity plans many people seem to get the two terms confused with each other. It is important to remember that disaster recovery is a step in the continuity plan. The attacks of September 11th caused a three day stoppage to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and trading worldwide for fear of follow-up attacks. The stock exchange did not continue to trade until the following week, which meant four days of trading were cancelled. The estimated loss was close to four billion dollars in IT equipment alone. Unfortunately when a terrorist attack happens the plans are learned on the fly. The basic recovery plan for September 11th was just to continue on.

Bibliography
Slater, D. (2012, December 13). Retrieved from cso.com: http://www.csoonline.com/article/2118605/pandemic-preparedness/business-continuity-and-disaster-recovery-planning-the-basics.html#more
Tittel, K. L. (2013, November 14). Retrieved from cio.com: http://www.cio.com/article/2381021/best-practices/how-to-create-an-effective-business-continuity-plan.html