Validating Your Business Continuity Plan

Book excerpt: Business continuity planning is a process of continual improvement, not a matter of writing a plan and then putting your feet up. Attempting to validate every aspect of your plan, however – particularly in a live rehearsal situation – could create a disaster of your own making.Validating Your Business Continuity Plan examines the three essential components of validating a business continuity plan – exercising, maintenance and review – and outlines a controlled and systematic approach to BCP validation while considering each component, covering methods and techniques such as table-top reviews, workshops and live rehearsals. The book also takes account of industry standards and guidelines to help steer the reader through the validation process, including the international standard ISO 22301 and the Business Continuity Institute’s Good Practice Guidelines. In addition, it provides a number of case studies based on the author’s considerable experience – some of them successful, others less so – to highlight common pitfalls and problems associated with the validation process.