What Is BCP (Business Continuity Plan)

A BCP (Business Continuity Plan) is a plan to minimize business interruption and continue or rapidly restore critical operations when an emergency occurs, such as a natural disaster, cyberattack, or pandemic.

The essence of BCP is not about "protecting everything" but about deciding in advance "what to protect first" with limited resources. Business Impact Analysis (BIA) identifies critical operations, and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) are set for each. As cases where IT failures threaten business continuity increase, such as system-wide shutdowns from ransomware attacks, the importance of IT-BCP grows year by year.

IT-BCP Recovery Strategies and Design

In IT-BCP, RTO and RPO are defined for each system, and recovery strategies are selected accordingly.

Hot Standby: A system equivalent to production runs at all times and switches over immediately upon failure. RTO is within minutes but cost is highest
Warm Standby: A reduced-scale system stands by and is scaled up and switched over upon failure. RTO is tens of minutes to hours
Cold Standby: Only backup data is maintained, and systems are built from scratch upon failure. RTO is days but cost is minimal

In cloud environments, availability can be ensured through multi-region or multi-AZ configurations. Following the 3-2-1 backup rule and geographically distributing backup data is fundamental. Document the restoration procedures from backups and regularly conduct restore tests to verify effectiveness.

BCP Development Steps

To develop an effective BCP, follow these steps in order.

Business Impact Analysis (BIA): Inventory all operations and assess the financial and social impact if each is disrupted. Define the maximum tolerable downtime for each operation
Risk Assessment: Evaluate the probability and impact of anticipated threats such as earthquakes, floods, cyberattacks, and pandemics
Recovery Strategy Development: Set RTO and RPO for each critical operation and select recovery methods balancing cost
Plan Documentation: Document activation criteria, command structure, contact networks, recovery procedures, and alternate site arrangements
Training and Review: Conduct regular tabletop exercises and live drills to verify plan effectiveness

Incorporate coordination procedures with CSIRT and incident response teams into the BCP to ensure readiness for cyberattack scenarios as well.

Preventing BCP from Becoming a Formality

A BCP does not end with its creation; continuous improvement is essential. The most common reasons BCPs become formalities are insufficient training and stagnant updates.

Training at least once a year: Conduct tabletop exercises every six months and live drills annually. Reflect issues discovered during training into the plan within 30 days
Update upon organizational changes: Promptly update the BCP when personnel changes, system upgrades, or site relocations occur. Outdated contact lists are the most common pattern of BCP decay
Learning from actual incidents: Feed back the results of actual failures and incidents into the BCP

A practical tip is to store BCP documents in cloud storage while also keeping printed copies available for offline access.

BCP Development Steps and Training

Developing an effective BCP requires following a systematic process. Plans created in an ad hoc manner will not function during actual emergencies.

Conducting Business Impact Analysis (BIA): BIA is the starting point for BCP development. Inventory all business processes and quantitatively evaluate the impact of each process stopping across four dimensions: financial loss, customer impact, legal risk, and reputational impact. This analysis clarifies which operations to protect first with limited resources. Skipping BIA and planning to "protect everything" results in a half-hearted plan that adequately protects nothing.

Setting RTO and RPO: Based on BIA results, set RTO (Recovery Time Objective) and RPO (Recovery Point Objective) for each operation. For example, an e-commerce order system might have RTO of 1 hour and RPO of 5 minutes, while an internal expense system might have RTO of 72 hours and RPO of 24 hours, differentiating by business criticality. Since RTO and RPO have a cost tradeoff, obtain executive approval for these decisions.

Tabletop Exercises: Stakeholders gather in a meeting room and verbally simulate BCP procedures against a specific scenario (e.g., core systems completely shut down by ransomware). Since no actual systems need to be stopped, these can be conducted frequently at low cost. Typical issues discovered include outdated contact information, ambiguous procedures, and undefined backup personnel for absent staff.

Annual Review Cycle: Conduct a scheduled BCP review at least once a year. Reviews should reflect organizational changes, system upgrades, and emerging threats, and include BIA re-evaluation and RTO/RPO validation. Coordinate with CSIRT to incorporate lessons from the past year's incident responses, continuously improving plan effectiveness.

To learn more about this topic, see Ransomware Protection Guide: Defending Against Extortion Attacks.

Common Misconceptions

BCP is only needed by large enterprises: BCP is even more important for small and medium-sized businesses. With less financial resilience than large enterprises, even a few days of business interruption can lead to closure. Even a simplified BCP appropriate to the organization's scale can make a significant difference in recovery speed.
Data backups eliminate the need for a BCP: Backups are just one element of a BCP. Even with backups, recovery is impossible if restoration procedures are undocumented, the restoration environment is unavailable, or the responsible personnel are absent. A BCP is a comprehensive plan covering people, processes, and technology.

BCP (Business Continuity Plan)