Business disruption generally comes without warning. You may believe that your business is fairly robust, yet factors such as the environment, economics, politics or people have the ability to suddenly bring any organization to its knees. ISO 22301 the Business Continuity Management (BCM) standard has been developed to protect companies from the risks associated with company outages which can occur due to unexpected disruptions or disasters. Disruptions to your business can result in revenue loss, data risk breakdowns and failure to deliver normal client services as per service level agreements (SLA’s).

ISO 22301 requires an organization to pre-empt risks and put in place contingency plans and tested responses to more effectively respond to unexpected threats should they arise. It helps your team agree timeframes within which you will resume your activity following an adverse event. The standard also requires you to make resources available to implement, maintain and test plans to ensure operational continuity regardless of the conditions.

A BCM practice can safeguard an organization against the proceeding reputation damage which can occur from missed deadlines, data leakages, operational or IT outages, industrial actions, disappointed clients or direct financial losses due to the disruption. Universal Registrars recommends that every business has a plan in place to deal with potential disruptions and to avoid excessive downtime and reduced productivity during the disruption.