IT Governance Blog on IT governance, risk management, compliance and information security.

Business continuity and disaster recovery planning is a key governance responsibility. The UK Companies Act 2006 gives statutory force to what has long been the worldwide common law duty of directors, which is to exercise due care in relation to their companies. Specifically, directors must “exercise reasonable care, skill and diligence” (s.174).

So, regardless of any impending budget cuts, the board of directors remain accountable for ensuring that the organisation has developed and tested business continuity and disaster recovery plans that deal with all the likely risks that face the organisation.

In the UK, the NHS has determined that BS25999 certification is a key way for NHS entities to demonstrate that they are adequately resilient, and UK local authorities have recognised the BS25999 certification is the best method possible for demonstrating they are meeting their obligations under the Civil Contingencies Act.

Internationally, organisations in both the public and private sector are pursuing BS25999 certification in order to demonstrate to stakeholders and customers that they have adequate business resilience arrangements in place.

BS25999 BCMS Implementation Toolkit & Manager’s Guide BS25999 is best practice for Business Continuity Management, and this toolkit contains all the templates and tools that enable a BC manager to quickly and effectively implement a BCMS in line with BS25999. BS25999-2:2007 specifies at clause 3.4.1.1, that the BCMS (Business Continuity Management System) must, as a minimum, contain the following documents:

1. the scope and objectives of the BCMS and procedures;
2. the BCM policy;
3. the provision of resources;
4. the competency of BCM personnel and associated training records;
5. the business impact analysis;
6. the risk assessment;
7. the business continuity strategy;
8. the incident response structure;
9. business continuity plans and incident management plans;
10. BCM exercising;
11. the maintenance and review of BCM arrangements;
12. internal audit;
13. management review of the BCMS;
14. preventive and corrective actions; and
15. continual improvement.

The BS25999 BCMS Implementation Toolkit contains document templates, tools and references that enable you to quickly and efficiently produce your own tailored versions of all these essential documents.

This toolkit also contains electronic copies of the following specialist guides:

• BS25999 A Pocket Guide,
• Business Continuity and BS25999: A Combined Glossary, and
• Business Continuity Management: a Manager’s Guide to BS25999 – a concise and practical guide to implementing this new benchmark for business continuity management.

This toolkit comes with an inbuilt 12-month support and upgrade contract that ensures that buyers benefit from all improvements to the toolkit for 12 months, and provides online documentation email drafting support as and when you need it.

The BS25999 BCMS Toolkit is available for immediate download.

Tags: BS25999, Business Continuity, ITGP

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 at 3:48 pm and is filed under Business Continuity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.