Business Continuity History

Business continuity is widely becoming accepted as no only a useful management discipline but also an essential one. Time has seen this activity develop from solely IT disaster recovery through to an enterprise – wide activity touching on every aspect of the business. Coupled with this, we have seen the recognition for business continuity evolve from a ‘nice to have’ through an essential part of Y2K planning, to a recognised and accepted component of risk management and corporate governance.

Business Continuity Management spans not only the reactionary activities of ‘response’, ‘recovery’ and ‘return to normal’ but also the pre-emptive assessment, planning and protection to assist organisations maintain essential activities to reassure stakeholders, maintain minimum levels of service and protect revenue streams. In some organisations where they have developed the maturity of Business Continuity Management, it also assists these organisations identify, assess and manage aspects of risk, identify single points of failure within business fully addressing this, improve job satisfactions and improve resource resistance and identify non-essential (and sometimes erroneous) activities thereby helping to streamline key activities to make them more efficient and cost effective.