Paraphrasing

Sunshine machine works is operating in one story headquarters with around 100 employees infrastructure. The management is keen to implement business continuity plan in order to identify, analyze and handle foreseen/ unforeseen risks, vulnerabilities in best possible way without halting business operations. Business continuity plan is important for disaster management and maintaining database of information of company in good health.

Sunshine machine works as other companies is constantly innovating for meetings objectives and providing an excellent customer experience. Since, business interruption cannot be afforded at this point of time so a business continuity plan is must to be implemented. A Business continuity plan is a proactive act to find out a way to resume business after a disaster/ disruption. The plan will enable the organization to deliver its critical products and services to its client. This plan will include:

· Plan, arrangements and measures for ensuring company’s critical products and services reach the customers without any interruption.

· Identification of resources which are necessary for supporting BCP.

BCP is very important for the organization as it will protect Sunshine works from potential risks that include

· Accidents

· Cyber attacks

· Energy and power disruptions

· Communication or transportation failure

· Sabotage

· Natural and environmental disasters

Business continuity plan consists of five sections which Sunshine Machines will need to implement

· BCP Governance

· BIA (Business Impact analysis)

· Business continuity’s Plans, arrangement and measures

· Readiness procedures

· Practice techniques for quality assurance

This is first phase of BCP where a committee is form for ensuring commitment and roles of senior management. (Ananth, 2007). Basically, the committee will approve governance structure, assign and approve roles of participants, give strategic direction, review and approve continuity plan and resolve all conflicts that may arise. BCP committee may comprised of following members

· Executive sponsor

· BCP coordinator

· CIO (Chief information officer)

· Security officer

· Business representatives.

This is second phase and purpose here is to identify critical products and services of organization, set priorities and impact analysis. Business impact analysis includes:

· Identification of critical and mandatory aspects of Sunshine Machines: In this step all services and goods are identified from mission statement.

· Prioritization of products and services: In this step, products and services defined in last step are ranked but using the information about impact of discontinuation of that particular product or service.

· Identify impacts: In this step, impacts of discontinuation of product or service on overall organization and customers by identifying customer’s reaction and effect on organization’s functionality.

· Ranking: After appropriate information has been analyzed and assembled, business services and products are ranked based on revenue lost, severity of impact, recovery time etc.

· Dependencies identification: It is now time to chalk down external and internal dependencies of predicts and services. (Cerullo, 2004)

This is most important step of BCP where are risks, threats and disasters are identified and a mitigation strategy is developed

· Risk Assessment: This is first step of the phase where all risks and threats are identified, analyzed and assessment plan is developed. All strategies for handling the identified risks will be developed and a risk assessment report is developed.

· Analysis of current recovery capability: Recovery options currently employed in the organization are identified.

· Development of continuity plan: Continuity plan that will ensure continuity of products and services will be developed. The plan must be able to handle disruption impact and maximum severity level. For example, using back and restore procedures for data corruption and loss risk. (Maheshwari, Gaurav, Singh, C. K., 2010)

· Response preparation: Response and recovery operations will be required to be conducted after crisis. A response and recovery team will be developed but it should be taken care that team members should be responsible and experienced.

Readiness procures includes

· Training: All staff members are required to be trained for BCP and aware of all risks and threats.

· Exercises: For achieving readiness and competence, exercises should be practiced and a plan should be developed for same.

BCP developed is required to be reviewed for assessing relevance, accuracy and effectiveness of the plan. The phase ends up uncovering deficiencies of BCP. This can be done by internal and external audit. For Sunshine Machines, conducting an internal audit is a better option

For Sunshine Machines, in order to continue delivery of products and services in odd conditions, Business continuity plan is very important. BCP not only help to moderate risk but enable organization to provide undisrupted services. BCP is compromised of various phases which need to be practiced carefully for a successful BCP implementation.