PURPOSE
The purpose of this policy is to provide guidelines for establishing and following appropriate business continuity requirements. This policy can be customized as needed to fit the needs of your organization.

SUMMARY
It’s an unfortunate fact of life in today’s world that both natural and man-made disasters can place businesses at risks, both moderate and severe. Whether caused by earthquakes, hurricanes, blizzards, terrorist attacks, sabotage or some other element, business can be impeded from normal operations or shut down entirely if catastrophic events are powerful enough.

Having a plan to protect the business and ensure operational consistency is critical in today’s business environment to ensure revenue and reputation are not adversely impacted.

From the policy

Develop a business continuity team

The first order of business should be to form a business continuity team in order to execute (and modify as needed) this plan.

Ensure all groups and departments that might be impacted by a disaster are represented accordingly. Make sure appropriate staffing resources are made available for these efforts and that multiple employees can perform the tasks involved with a single role — for instance, two or three system administrators trained in server failover techniques.

If employees on the team depart or are reassigned elsewhere, make sure their role is filled by another individual.