Operation
8.4.4
Business continuity plans
Document and keep up business continuity plans that lead teams through response and recovery. Taken together, the plans set out: the actions for keeping prioritized activities going, or restoring them, within time frames fixed in advance; how the disruption and the response will be monitored; the thresholds set beforehand, and the process, for triggering the response; procedures for delivering products and services at the capacity agreed; and how the immediate effects are handled with regard to people's welfare, avoiding further loss, and the environment. Each plan must state its purpose, scope and objectives; the roles and duties of the team that carries it out; the actions that put the solutions into effect; the supporting information needed to trigger, run, coordinate and communicate the response, including the triggering criteria, internal and external interdependencies, what resources are needed, what must be reported, and how the response is stood down; and it must be usable and to hand when and where it is needed.
What the baseline asks
Document and keep up business continuity plans that lead teams through response and recovery. Taken together, the plans set out: the actions for keeping prioritized activities going, or restoring them, within time frames fixed in advance; how the disruption and the response will be monitored; the thresholds set beforehand, and the process, for triggering the response; procedures for delivering products and services at the capacity agreed; and how the immediate effects are handled with regard to people's welfare, avoiding further loss, and the environment. Each plan must state its purpose, scope and objectives; the roles and duties of the team that carries it out; the actions that put the solutions into effect; the supporting information needed to trigger, run, coordinate and communicate the response, including the triggering criteria, internal and external interdependencies, what resources are needed, what must be reported, and how the response is stood down; and it must be usable and to hand when and where it is needed.
What it means when the service runs in the cloud
The plan itself should be usable when the provider console is unavailable. Keep the contact list, the fallback steps and the customer message offline and current.
Evidence an auditor or a customer asks for
- Plan set with each plan carrying every required element
- Activation criteria and thresholds stated in the plan itself
- Interdependency and resource sections reconciled to the BIA
- Stand down process defined
- Evidence of availability at the point of use, including offline copies
Common gaps in a cloud estate
- Plans that cover activation and response but have no stand down, so the organization never formally returns to normal
- Agreed capacity omitted, so continuing an activity at any level counts as success
- Welfare and environmental consequences unaddressed
- Plans held only in a document management system that the disruption may take out
- Interdependencies listed inside the plan that contradict the BIA
Done well, what the file shows
Done well, this clause leaves a plan set with each plan carrying every required element that names the service, the region and the date it was last tested, so a reviewer can follow it to the provider document without asking anyone. Where that record does not exist, the gap is visible in the next review whether or not the service is working.
A test you can run this month
Open the plan with the network blocked and see whether it is usable.