Food for thought...
Read the full article as a PDF. Key points: 1) This standard places business continuity management firmly into the risk management business process, allowing organisations to leverage and augment existing organisational risk management practices, whilst recognising that some events may exceed an organisation’s capacity to respond to disruption using routine management methods and structures. 2) Business continuity practitioners may find that this model over emphasises risk identification, analysis and evaluation, whilst paying lip service to the traditional business continuity methodologies. 3) The methodology breaks down the process into defining the principles, preparing and managing the framework and process for defining and controlling disruption-related risk. By investing in the design of the framework an organisation has the groundwork for the governance, accountability and integration of the process into the business activities. In line with good practice the standard also identifies the importance of including communication and consultation, and the process of continual improvement into the framework. 4) The overarching process section of the standard aligns with existing continuity management methodologies. 5) AS/NZS5050 places importance on selecting appropriate protective controls for disruption related risk, considering a proactive approach for those risks which influence the scale and likelihood of potentially disruptive events, and as a protective control the preparation of contingency plans (continuity and recovery plans) and contingency capability (failover capacity, diversification of supply chain). 6) The recommendation in the standard is that contingency plans address “stabilization, continuing critical functions and recovery” which are described as the three major forms of treatments in the plan. 7) 5050 provides a full section which allows for verification against the elements of the organisation management system. This section introduces two important elements which have been missing from previous BCM standards – performance assessment and improvement of the framework. This will prove appealing to both those organisations that have adopted 72:2001 and the risk and audit committee. 8) Followers of the existing Standards Australia business continuity related standards and guides may find it a difficult leap from the existing approach to the risk based methodology preferred by the latest standard. Read the full article as a PDF. Related article New business continuity standard published by Standards New Zealand and Standards Australia
•Date: 16th July 2010 • Region: Australia/World •Type: Article •Topic: BC general |
