Duration 3 days – 21 hrs

 

Overview

This course provides participants with a practical understanding of Business Continuity Planning and how organizations prepare for, respond to, and recover from operational disruptions. It covers business impact analysis, risk assessment, continuity strategies, emergency response, crisis communication, plan development, testing, maintenance, and continual improvement.

Participants will develop the knowledge and practical skills needed to support or create a structured Business Continuity Plan that protects critical people, processes, facilities, technology, information, suppliers, and customer services.

 

Objectives

• • Explain the principles and lifecycle of business continuity management. 
  • Distinguish business continuity from disaster recovery, emergency response, crisis management, and risk management. 
  • Identify critical business functions, processes, resources, and dependencies. 
  • Conduct a basic risk assessment and Business Impact Analysis. 
  • Determine acceptable downtime and recovery requirements. 
  • Develop suitable continuity and recovery strategies. 
  • Define business continuity roles, responsibilities, and escalation procedures. 
  • Prepare essential components of a Business Continuity Plan. 
  • Establish crisis communication and stakeholder-notification procedures. 
  • Design BCP exercises, tests, and simulations. 
  • Evaluate test results and identify corrective actions.
  • Maintain and continually improve the BCP.

 

Target Audience

• Business continuity and disaster recovery personnel 
• Risk management and compliance professionals 
• Department and business-unit heads 
• Operations managers and supervisors 
• Information technology and information security personnel 
• Facilities, administration, and security personnel 
• Human resources and corporate communications teams 
• Internal auditors and governance personnel 
• Project and program managers 
• Emergency response and crisis management team members 
• Employees assigned as BCP coordinators or process owners

 

Prerequisites 

• Basic knowledge of their organization’s operations 
• Familiarity with departmental processes and responsibilities 
• Awareness of existing risk, emergency-response, or recovery procedures
• Participants may bring an existing BCP, process map, risk register, or emergency procedure for use during the workshops.

Course Outline 

 

Day 1 — BCP Fundamentals, Governance and Risk Assessment

Module 1: Introduction to Business Continuity

• Meaning and purpose of business continuity 
• Common causes of operational disruption 
• Organizational, financial, legal, regulatory, and reputational impacts 
• Benefits of an effective continuity program 
• Business continuity terminology and concepts 

Module 2: Business Continuity Management Framework

• Business continuity management lifecycle 
• BCP policy, scope, and objectives 
• Governance structure and management commitment 
• Roles and responsibilities 
• BCP coordinator and process-owner responsibilities 
• Documentation and records management 
• Relevant principles of ISO 22301 

Module 3: Relationship with Other Management Disciplines

• Business continuity planning 
• Disaster recovery planning 
• Emergency and incident response 
• Crisis management 
• Operational and enterprise risk management 
• Cybersecurity incident response 
• Health, safety, and security management 

Module 4: Risk Assessment for Business Continuity

• Identifying internal and external threats 
• Natural, technological, human, health, and supplier-related disruptions 
• Assessing likelihood and business impact 
• Existing preventive and recovery controls 
• Risk-rating and prioritization methods 
• Developing a basic risk register 

       Workshop

      Participants identify key disruption scenarios, affected processes, existing controls, and possible business consequences.

 

Day 2 — Business Impact Analysis and Continuity Strategies

Module 5: Business Impact Analysis

• Purpose and value of a BIA 
• Identifying critical products, services, and processes 
• Financial, operational, legal, customer, and reputational impacts 
• Process interdependencies 
• Internal and external resource requirements 
• Minimum acceptable service levels 
• Prioritizing activities for recovery 

Module 6: Recovery Requirements

• Maximum Tolerable Period of Disruption 
• Maximum Acceptable Outage 
• Recovery Time Objective 
• Recovery Point Objective 
• Minimum Business Continuity Objective 
• Work Recovery Time 
• Establishing realistic recovery priorities 

Module 7: Resource and Dependency Analysis

• People and specialist skills 
• Facilities and workspaces 
• Information and records 
• Applications, systems, and infrastructure 
• Equipment and supplies 
• Telecommunications and utilities 
• Vendors, outsourced services, and supply chains 
• Single points of failure 

Module 8: Developing Continuity Strategies

• Prevention, response, recovery, and restoration strategies 
• Alternate work locations 
• Work-from-home arrangements 
• Manual workarounds 
• Cross-training and staff succession 
• Data backup and system recovery 
• Alternate suppliers and emergency procurement 
• Resource-sharing and reciprocal arrangements 
• Strategy feasibility and cost considerations 

       Workshop

      Participants conduct a simplified BIA and recommend continuity strategies for selected critical processes.

 

Day 3 — Plan Development, Crisis Response, Testing and Improvement

Module 9: Developing the Business Continuity Plan

• Recommended BCP structure 
• Purpose, scope, assumptions, and limitations 
• Activation criteria 
• Incident assessment and escalation 
• Plan activation and deactivation 
• Response, recovery, and restoration procedures 
• Roles, contact details, and call trees 
• Checklists, forms, and supporting records 
• Departmental and organization-wide plans 
• Version control and document security 

Module 10: Incident and Crisis Management

• Incident command and coordination 
• Crisis management team structure 
• Situation assessment and decision-making 
• Establishing a command center 
• Employee accountability and welfare 
• Coordination with emergency services and authorities 
• Recording decisions, actions, and expenses 
• Transition from response to recovery 

Module 11: Crisis Communication

• Internal and external communication protocols 
• Employee, customer, regulator, supplier, and media communication 
• Emergency notification methods 
• Communication responsibilities and approval controls 
• Preparing holding statements and message templates 
• Managing misinformation and reputational risk 

Module 12: BCP Exercises and Testing

• Checklist reviews and walkthroughs 
• Tabletop exercises 
• Functional simulations 
• Technical recovery tests 
• Full-scale exercises 
• Developing exercise objectives and scenarios 
• Exercise roles and evaluation criteria 
• Recording gaps, observations, and corrective actions 

Module 13: Maintenance and Continual Improvement

• Scheduled and event-driven plan reviews 
• Updating contacts, processes, systems, and dependencies 
• Training and awareness programs 
• Post-incident and post-exercise reviews 
• Corrective-action tracking 
• Management review 
• Performance indicators and continual improvement 

Final Workshop

       Participants prepare and present a concise departmental BCP covering:

• Critical processes 
• Major disruption scenarios 
• Recovery objectives 
• Continuity strategies 
• Activation and escalation procedures 
• Assigned responsibilities 
• Communication requirements 
• Testing and maintenance schedule