Despite preparations to minimize the impact of risk, there may be times when a major event occurs that could jeopardize your business. To deal with such disasters, a proactive approach needs to be taken to ensure the business will function normally no matter what the circumstances. Business continuity is a process that identifies key functions of an organization, the threats most likely to endanger them, and creates processes and procedures that ensure these functions will not be interrupted (at least for long) in the event of an incident. It involves restoring the normal business functions of all business operations, so that all elements of the business can be fully restored.

Business continuity plans are a collection of different plans that are designed to prevent disasters and provide insight into recovering from disasters when they occur. Some of the plans that may be incorporated into a business continuity plan include:

• Disaster Recovery Plan Provides procedures for recovering from a disaster after it occurs, and addresses how to return normal IT functions to the business.

• Business Recovery Plan Addresses how business functions will resume after a disaster at an alternate site.

• Business Resumption Plan Addresses how critical systems and key functions of the business will be maintained.

• Contingency Plan Addresses what actions can be performed to restore normal business activities after a disaster, or when additional incidents occur during this process.

In looking at these different plans, it can be seen that they have similarities, but...