06 Dec Project 3: Business Continuity Start Here

Project 3: Business Continuity Start Here

In the process of enterprise risk management, a primary element is the business continuity plan (BCP), which consists of steps to continue operations should a worst-case scenario event take place. Your work on vulnerabilities, threats, and risk in the first two projects will support this.

The BCP assignment will detail the following elements:

· resources required and defined stakeholder roles

· business impact analysis

· recommended preventative controls

· recovery strategies

· contingency plan that includes implementation and maintenance guidelines and defined procedures for testing the plan

Grades are determined on the ability to clearly articulate a developed, effective business continuity plan that considers relevant environmental factors and aligns with organizational objectives.

This is the third of four sequential projects. There are 13 steps in this project.

Step 1: Review Assigned Organization

The process of business continuity planning addresses the preservation and recovery of business in the event of outages to normal business operations. The output of the process is the business continuity plan (BCP), an approved set of documented arrangements and procedures that enables an organization to facilitate the recovery of business operations, minimize losses, and replace or repair incurred damages as quickly as possible (Ouyang, n.d.).

According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Special Publication 800-34, Contingency Planning Guide for IT Systems, business continuity planning is an ongoing task, the goals of which are to (Ouyang, n.d.):

· sustain operations

· recover and resume operations

· protect assets

 

Goals of the BCP Cycle

In the case of your particular organization (use the one assigned to you in CMP 610 or another organization of your choice), the company may have an existing BCP. However, in your organization, as with many others, the BCP was written, put on the shelf, and rarely, if ever, referenced unless an emergency required implementation.

Knowing this, conduct operations as if there were no existing plan and create a new plan.

The next step will involve planning for the BCP, including establishing a need and defining a scope.

References

Ouyang, A. (n.d.). CISSP common body of knowledge: Business continuity & disaster recovery planning domain. http://opensecuritytraining.info/CISSP-9-BCDRP_files/9-BCP+DRP.pdf

Business Continuity Plan

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Many companies do not realize the importance of a business continuity plan (BCP) until an incident has occurred. A cybersecurity BCP includes a strategy of how the organization information technology would operate and recover after an incident that could be result of an intentional attack or caused by a natural disaster.

There are four critical steps when establishing a BCP, according to guidelines published by the Department of Homeland Security:

· conduct a business impact analysis to identify time-sensitive or critical business functions and processes and the resources that support them

· identify and document resource requirements, and implement strategies to recover critical business functions and processes

· organize a business continuity team and compile a continuity plan to manage a business disruption

· conduct training for the business continuity team and testing and exercises to evaluate recovery strategies and the plan

There are several recovery goals stated within a BCP, such as recovery point objective (RPO), recovery time objective (RTO), business recovery requirements, and technical recovery requirements. An RPO states how far back should an organization go in time in order to recover data after an incident. Think of clicking Ctrl+Alt+Shift+H on your computer in order to see the history of the websites you have visited. RTO is based on the idea of how long it takes to restore backup data to its original state in order to resume business operations.

One key component of an BCP is the well-being of employees. People should always be a priority when establishing a BCP. All other components of an organization can be replaced, rebuilt, or insured. According to the code of ethics of ISC2, the International Information System Security Certification Consortium, an information security professional must always “protect society, the common good, necessary public trust and confidence, and the infrastructure.”

References

Department of Homeland Security. (n.d.). Business continuity plan. https://www.ready.gov/business/implementation/continuity

ISC2. (n.d.) ISC2 code of ethics. https://www.isc2.org/ethics/default.aspx?terms=code%20of%20ethics

Step 2: Define the Scope

In the first step, you reviewed BCP methodologies. You are now ready to continue the first part of the planning process, which involves establishing the need for a BCP and defining an appropriate scope for the company outlined in the scenario.

The BCP should address aspects of business continuity, business recovery, contingency planning, disaster recovery, and related activities. Focus on those elements that are adequate and expedient, based on your risk assessment for the enterprise.

Governmental agencies are required to develop an enterprise continuity of operations program (COOP). A COOP is a detailed framework that documents how the agency will ensure that essential functions continue through an emergency situation until normal operations can resume. Outside of federal, state, and local government, enterprises call that kind of framework a BCP. Both COOPs and BCPs are created to help organizations recover from disasters.

Consider what aspects of business continuity the BCP will address, such as business recovery, contingency planning, and disaster recovery. Submit a brief description for feedback (one page or less) of the topic areas to be covered in the BCP.

Step 4: Identify Key Resources and Stakeholders

After the BIA, the next step is to identify the key resources necessary and the stakeholders (executives and management) responsible for those resources. Remember, some resources necessary for a successful BCP might be external to the company. Be sure to include these aspects in the plan.

Now that all resources and stakeholders are identified and listed, answer these two questions: What resources are needed? Who are the players?

Expand the table for the BCP by including a column for accountability. With an assumed and reasonable job title, make a list of probable stakeholders responsible for execution of each recovery effort. Clearly identify their respective responsibilities during the reactivation of business processes.

Use the Key Resources and Stakeholders Template to indicate key resources and stakeholders involved in the recovery for feedback.

Step 5: Consider Preventive Controls

After identifying the key stakeholders and resources, take a look at what can be put in place in advance to prevent or reduce risk. Based on previous research, plus what you have learned in the business impact analysis, what could be done to eliminate or minimize the impact of a major event? These are called preventive controls in the business process realm, or risk countermeasure implementation in technology language.

Either way, the BCP should contain controls that can be classified as measures taken in advance of a catastrophe that are designed to reduce the risk of a negative impact. In the process of itemizing the controls, make sure they are properly aligned with organizational goals and the strategic direction of the enterprise.

The preventative controls selected should be aligned with the organizational goals and strategies. You will list these controls in the next step.

Step 6: List Preventive Controls

In this step, you will write a description of the preventative controls that you considered in the previous step. These controls could eliminate or minimize the impact of a major event.

Upload a description of the preventative controls to be used in the BCP here for feedback.

Step 7: Research Recovery Strategies

A BCP is uniquely different from a complete disaster recovery plan (DRP), neither of which is a small undertaking. Both are required to return the enterprise to 100 percent functionality. The view for the enterprise is to have one BCP that contains multiple DRPs generally broken into department or business function categories.

The BCP is an overarching strategic approach to getting any business back “in” business with all mandatory functionality as soon as possible after disaster strikes. This is why the previous steps and projects have required these elements to be identified and prioritized. As such, the BCP is not as detail-oriented as the DRP and only contains DRP requirements that are absolutely mandatory to get the business back in action at the earliest opportunity.

The DRP is usually more technical, very specific, and very much a necessity in today’s highly connected technology infrastructure. The DRP includes descriptions of data backup strategies, recovery sites, and postincident requirements.

There will naturally be several aspects of the rebuild that might not go exactly as planned. This exercise will be to demonstrate an ability to follow multiple paths in a decision tree environment. The objective will be to create a drawing or descriptive list that follows both options to each decision of “yes” or “no” or “success” or “failure” to the reconstructive effort.

Specifically, for each step, conclude with an answer to the question “was the action successful?” If “yes,” what is the next step? Or, if “no,” what is the alternative step to take next? Continue this process until you have successfully returned to operational status or determined you cannot reactivate under current circumstances. If the result of the plan is an inability to recover, the plan needs additional work to make it successful.

In the next step, you will document the selected recovery strategies.

Step 8: Document Recovery Strategies

Now that you have researched recovery strategies as they pertain to a BCP, list or map multiple strategic options to accomplish the recovery effort. Upload a description of the planned recovery strategies here for feedback.

Step 9: Develop Implementation and Maintenance Procedures for the Contingency Plan

You’ve documented recovery strategies and are well on the way to completing the BCP. But writing a BCP is not enough. You must also have a clear plan for implementing and maintaining the BCP. Answer these questions:

· What resources are needed?

· Under what conditions, such as fire, natural disasters, occurrence of a terrorist attack, etc., will the BCP will be activated?

· How will stakeholders be made aware of the policies and procedures of the BCP?

· How will employees be trained on the plan? How often will training occur? Will there be a general training for all employees or role-based trainings for people in specific functional areas?

· How/where will the plan for stored for safekeeping and accessibility when needed?

· When and how will BCP maintenance reviews be scheduled?

· How will updates and changes to the plan be handled? How often will the plan be updated?

In this step, begin to develop a strategy for how the BCP will be implemented and maintained. This information will be used in Step 11, in which the contingency plan will be documented. Next, you will develop testing procedures for the plan.

Step 10: Develop Testing Procedures for the Contingency Plan

You’ve begun to outline your strategy for how to implement and maintain a BCP. It is also important to conduct business continuity testing to evaluate the effectiveness of a preparedness program in practice. This will give insight into whether the parts of the preparedness program will work and can help identify aspects of the BCP that work on paper but are ineffective or impractical in reality.

Examples of BCP Tests
Types of Tests	Description
Structured walk-through	Step-by-step review of BCP plans with organization’s functional representatives
Checklist test	Functional representatives review BCP plans and check off the points that are listed to ensure concerns and activities are addressed
Simulation	A scenario-based practice execution of the BCP plans.
Parallel test	Operational test conducted at the alternate site(s).
Full interruption test	Full-scale operational test including shutdown of primary site and recovery of business operations at alternate site(s).
Source: Ouyang, A. (n.d.). CISSP common body of knowledge: Business continuity & disaster recovery planning domain. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.

Taking time to develop, document, and test consistent processes and controls will also help you prepare for the annual audit of your information security system under any of the commonly used security and audit frameworks. Under these security and audit methodologies, auditors will gather information about the organization’s security systems, confirm that appropriate security measures are in place, and provide a report on their findings.

Now develop your strategy for how the BCP will be tested. Your plan will be included in the contingency plan to be submitted in the next step.

Step 11: Document the Contingency Plan

You’ve developed testing procedures. However, an effective BCP must outline how the plan will be implemented and maintained and also how it will be tested to ensure its viability in a real emergency situation. Therefore, an integral part of the BCP should be a discussion of plans for implementation and maintenance and for business continuity testing.

Upload your contingency plan with a description of how the BCP will be tested and plans for ensuring the proper implementation and maintenance of the plan here for feedback.

Step 12: Consolidate and Update Your Work

You’ve documented testing and implementation procedures, and the plan is nearly complete. In the next step, you will submit your final BCP. Take some time now to update your work on the project to this point and make updates based on feedback received or new information uncovered.

In the final step, you’ll complete and submit the BCP.

Step 13: Write the Business Continuity Plan (BCP)

Use the results from the previous steps to create a five- to seven-page business continuity plan. Explain the thought process of creating the specific plan steps and how each is related to business strategy considerations.

Use this Business Continuity Plan Template to submit your final assignment.