12 Questions to Assess Your Business Continuity Program Maturity

  • January 16, 2019
  • Quantivate

Can you trust your business continuity plan to get you through a crisis?

Your organization’s business continuity and disaster recovery plans are an essential part of protecting your critical processes and resources in case of a disaster or other unexpected event.

Get the conversation started about improving your business continuity management procedures and see how your organization measures up with 12 questions to assess the maturity of your BC/DR program.

How to Assess Your Business Continuity Program Maturity

1. What is the scope of your program? Does it take into account all the processes and resources identified in your business impact analysis? Does it consider stakeholder requirements? (Stakeholders may include management, customers, regulators, etc.)
2. Have you identified your organization’s critical business processes by overall impact and risk?
3. Have you identified the dependencies needed to perform your critical processes (may include applications, vendors, skills, locations, other processes, etc.)?
4. Have you calculated the acceptable amount of time following an unplanned incident that a service or technology can be unavailable? (i.e., the recovery time objective / RTO)
5. Have you calculated the maximum data loss each system can tolerate following an unplanned incident? (i.e., the recovery point objective / RPO)
6. Have you conducted exercises to verify the recovery time and recovery point objectives of key dependencies?
7. Have you developed and documented a consistent process for responding to incidents?
8. Have you conducted a scenario exercise to ensure that staff members know their roles and responsibilities?
9. Are your BC/DR plans well-documented and easy to implement (i.e., not dependent on particular individuals)?
10. Do you have a maintenance timetable and process for reviewing and updating your plans?
11. Have your plans been updated within the last year?
12. Do you have a system in place to communicate to all staff in a timely manner?

 



Need some help maturing your business continuity program?

If you answered “no” to any of these questions, it maybe be time to upgrade to a complete business continuity solution. Quantivate can help, with Business Continuity Software that features guided processes for identifying critical processes and dependencies, completing a business impact analysis, conducting scenario-based exercises, and more — all in one centralized platform.

Plus, our expert consultants can help fast-track your business continuity program maturity with service options including:

  • Maturity roadmap
  • Business impact analysis (BIA)
  • Threat and vulnerability assessment
  • RTO and RPO documentation
  • Plan owner interviews

Learn more about Quantivate Business Continuity Software & Services or request a personalized demo.