Business Continuity Plan (BCP)

A Business Continuity Plan is the documented, organisation-wide arrangement for continuing to deliver critical business functions during and after a disruption. Its subject is the business, not the technology: people, premises, suppliers, processes and communications are all inside its scope, and information systems are one dependency among several. That scope is what separates it from the Disaster Recovery Plan, which sits beneath it and restores the technology.

The plan is produced by a lifecycle rather than written in one sitting. Senior management authorises and funds the programme, a Business Impact Analysis establishes which functions are critical and how long each can be unavailable, recovery strategies are selected to fit those tolerances, the plan is written and distributed, and testing and maintenance keep it true. Accountability stays with senior management throughout: the work can be delegated to a coordinator, the answerability cannot.

Exam relevance: a scenario describing continued service to customers is describing the BCP, while one describing systems being brought back online is describing the DRP. Questions in this area tend to be about sequence and ownership rather than technology, so an option that has IT deciding what the business can survive without is one a candidate is expected to treat with suspicion.