Every self-respecting company has a business continuity plan. Its importance is undeniable, whereas its efficiency often means the difference during an unexpected crisis. And even though a BCP doesn’t protect you entirely, it helps your company avoid significant disruptions.
An effective business continuity plan should contain:
- The list of all potential threats and their impact
- Data recovery plan
- Smooth communication system
- Asset inventory
What’s more, if you want to ensure your disaster recovery plan works as it should, you need to update it regularly. In order to do that, you need to determine what are your BCP’s strengths and weaknesses. What does it mean? A lot of business continuity plan testing.
And when it comes to running a BCP test, a key is to know how to do that. It might sound like an easy thing to do, but the reality is much different. If you’d like to learn more, keep reading.
In the article below, we will answer all business continuity software enquiries regarding testing and organization.
Why Testing is Crucial
But before we get to the point, let’s answer the question regarding the importance of testing your business continuity plan. We’ve mentioned it briefly above, and while finding what your plan needs is the primary goal, there are also other reasons why running regular tests is critical.
Reviewing your BCP will allow you to:
- Confirm your plan works efficiently
- Identify the gaps and weaknesses of your BCP
- Evaluate your business’s response to various disaster scenarios
- Improve your plan and implement the necessary updates
- Decrease downtimes
In a nutshell, without testing, you’ll never identify potential problems with your plan. That can really make the difference in case anything wrong happens and prevent any significant disruptions from occurring.
How Often Should You Test
Now that you know why testing is crucial, it’s time to find out how often you should review your BCP. The answer to that question, however, is much more complicated. It all depends on the size and type of your company and the complexity of your plan.
Still, you running your BCP through tests should take place at least quarterly. Keep in mind that every time you organize your test, you need to take proper preparation beforehand. Make sure every employee is there and that your guidelines are clear.
Keep in mind that your tests may be more or less regular. As mentioned before, it all depends on your venture, and since every business is unique, the frequency can vary significantly.
How to Test Your Continuity Plan
You understand why, and you know how often. Now it’s time to get to the main point of the article and learn how to test your business continuity plan. When it comes to that, there are several types of tests you can run. Each one of them should refer to a specific disaster scenario.
When performing your test, the good idea is to use special business continuity software. It will give you immediate and precise results. Using one will also provide you with all the information necessary when it comes to potential improvements.
Below are two examples of how you should test your business continuity plan and the factors you need to consider depending on a scenario.
Data Loss
Data is your most valuable asset. Once somebody steals it or you lose it, you may as well close up shop. What’s more, with it being the most common cause of cyberattacks, making sure that your data recovery solution works fine is critical.
You need to know how fast you can recover as any downtime is a significant money loss. To answer that question, it’s best to run a simulation. You lose a bulk of data on purpose and test a recovery process. See whether it goes smoothly and if it’s efficient.
Physical Disruption
Do you remember the fire drill episode from The Office? Well, you don’t have to follow Dwight’s steps when testing your business continuity plan and its physical disruption preparedness.
Sure, you can simulate different scenarios, like earthquakes, tornados, or floods. Don’t go too far, though. You don’t want your employees to have heart attacks, do you?
Emergency Communication
Network and power outages are usually the consequences of natural disasters. Including them in your business, continuity planning is a must, and the same goes for ensuring your team knows how to deal with them.
Consider using emergency software when it comes to that. It’s a reliable and efficient solution that will ensure your organization doesn’t go through a communication hell.
Bottom Line
As you can see, you might claim to have the best business continuity plan in the world, but without testing it, you can never be sure how it works. And while reviewing your plan is key, it’s not a walk in the park. On the contrary, it involves many complex processes.
What’s more, since your plan review needs to be precise, it takes some time to perform it. That’s why it’s best always to prepare your employees in advance that you intend to perform testing. In fact, it’s best to schedule it. Also, ensure you include all the potential disaster scenarios awaiting your business.
Once you run your tests, you’ll be able to see which part of your business continuity plan you must improve.
