Business Continuity Management System Lifecycle

Now that you know what are the 6 steps to building a Business Continuity Management System, find out more about the BCMS Lifecycle.

The term ‘life cycle‘ accurately explains and expresses the operation of the Business Continuity Management System and its maintenance as it includes concepts such as improvement, progress, evolution, continuity, repetition, resolution and commitment.

But what are the stages of the BCMS Lifecycle?

First, the key internal and external factors that determine how the organization operates should be identified, as well as the stakeholders who might be interested in or relevant to the organization’s BCMS. These will help to define the scope of the organization’s BCMS and the BCMS Policy.

It is the process for identifying key business functions, processes and resources within the scope of the BCMS and for analyzing how the disruption of these due to a serious adverse event will affect the organization.

RA is the process of risk identification and analysis by determining the likelihood and impact the organization would have if the risk was realized, as well as evaluating risk and establishing controls to lessen vulnerabilities and reduce risk exposure.

Following the results of the BIA and RA the organization should identify the response strategies and recovery strategies for safeguarding the availability of its processes and services.

This is followed by the implementation of the agreed strategies through the process of developing the disaster recovery and business continuity plan in order to help the organization recover at a strategic and operational level.

Training, education and awareness plans should be in place to ensure and enhance the competence & awareness of personnel and understanding of roles, responsibilities and actions required once the business continuity plans are invoked.

To ensure that business continuity plans are functional and effective they should be tested before they are considered active, and at least annually. Issues requiring improvement and changes as a result of exercises and testing should be immediately addressed and implemented.

The BCMS maintenance process must be consistent and continuous. The organization’s BCMS should be assessed on a defined frequency and any non-conformities identified be evaluated and treated. Management review of the overall BCMS state is required on an ongoing basis to ensure System is properly maintained and improved.

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