The Business Continuity Institute has published a revision to its certification standards for professional practitioners. Previously the skills required by business continuity professionals have been presented as a list of ten required subject areas. However, to maintain consistency with the continuum of business continuity management which the Institute’s Good Practice Guide is based upon, the BCI has taken the decision to condense the ten certification skills into six fundamentally required skills.

The six new certification standards are listed below, verbatim:

The six subject areas listed below cover the competencies required by a professional practitioner in order to deliver effective Business Continuity Management. They are not presented in any particular order of importance or sequence.

1 BCM Policy and Programme Management
a) Establishing the need for a Business Continuity Management (BCM) Process, including: resilience strategies, recovery objectives, business continuity and incident management plans, obtaining management support for such a process.
b) Organising and managing the formulation of the function or process either in collaboration with, or as a key component of an integrated risk management initiative.
c) Developing, co-ordinating, evaluating and creating plans and procedures to communicate with external stakeholders, including the media, during incidents.

2 Understanding the Organisation
a) Business impact analysis (BIA):
Identifying the impacts resulting from disruptions and disaster scenarios that can affect the organisation and developing techniques that can be used to quantify and qualify such impacts.
Establishing critical functions, their recovery priorities and inter-dependencies so that recovery time objectives can be set.
b) Risk evaluation and control:
Determining the events and environmental surroundings that can adversely affect the organisation and its facilities with disruption and/or disaster and understanding the damage such events can cause.
Establishing the controls needed to prevent or minimise the effects of potential loss.
Providing cost-benefit analysis to justify investment in controls to mitigate risks.

3 Determining Business Continuity Management Strategies
a) Determining and guiding the selection of alternative business recovery operating strategies for continuation of business within recovery time and/or recovery point objectives, while maintaining the organisation’s critical functions.
b) Delivering solutions for continuation of business within the recovery time and/or recovery point objectives, whilst maintaining the organisation’s critical functions.
c) Developing, coordinating, evaluating and creating plans and procedures to communicate with internal stakeholders during incidents.
d) The provision of post-incident support and guidance for employees and their families.

4 Developing and Implementing a BCM Response
a) Developing and implementing emergency response procedures for responding to and stabilising the situation following an incident or event.
b) Establishing and managing an Emergency Operations Centre to be used as a command centre during the emergency.
c) Practical experience in handling incidents/emergencies.
d) Designing, developing and implementing business continuity and incident management plans that provide continuity within recovery time and/or recovery point objectives.

5 Exercising, Maintenance and Review
a) Pre-planning and coordinating plan walkthroughs/exercises.
b) Evaluating, updating, improving and documenting the results of exercises.
c) Developing processes to maintain the currency of continuity capabilities, business continuity and incident management plans in accordance with the organisation’s strategic direction.
d) Establishing appropriate policies and procedures for coordinating incidents, continuity and restoration activities with external agencies whilst ensuring compliance with applicable statutes and/or regulations.
e) Practical experience in dealing with external agencies.

6 Embedding Business Continuity Management within the Organisation’s Culture
a) Preparing a programme to create and maintain corporate awareness and enhance the skills required to develop and implement the business continuity management programme or process and its supporting activities.

http://www.thebci.org/certificationstandards.htm

•Date: 8th April 2008• Region: UK/World •Type: Article •Topic: BC general
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