Business Continuity Plan (BCP), now more than ever ¡!

Back in 2009, a discipline was born in Latin America that had been developing for a couple of years in Europe and the US. It went beyond to the well-known crisis management plans, on the corporate world, the “Business Continuity Plans” (BCP) appeared.

Basically, the new scenario required the need to develop tools so that a company, beyond its size, could effectively deal with an event of relevant magnitude, in a position to affect it massively until it achieved the total disruption of its activities. One of the scenarios considered at the time was the “pandemic” of Avian Flu (H1N1), which fortunately did not happen.

I must admit that no one, at that time, considered such a scenario as possible. Moreover, it was taken as an unworkable example of maximum impact, but of almost no probability of occurrence. Well, welcome to the reality.

At that time and in later years, the development of other complex plans, such as the disaster recovery plan, the infrastructure crisis management plan and other not-so-known ones, focused entirely on the IT field, setting aside the most important asset of a company, the Human Resource.

Very detailed plans were delineated on how to maintain and safeguard IT infrastructure, equipment and information to avoid disruption to the organization’s operations and make information available to all employees. However, the integrity (physical and emotional) of a company’s human resources in an extreme scenario was not regarded. Proof of this is the permanence in the time of telework and the lack of office presence for such a long period of time.

Today, that scenario, which seemed virtually unlikely, is a fact. And we’re all already immersed in it. All companies had to adapt – immediately and in many cases without the necessary planning – all the functions of the human resource according to “telework”. Presence at the facility was minimized or avoided; or they were closed by staying active and functioning specific vital areas of companies, and I repeat, all this happened without too much prior planning.

Let’s talk about resilience, a new term we all know today very well. This pandemic has left us several teachings, and it will still give us more. First, it should be noted that consideration of the worst-case scenario should always be taken into account no matter how ridiculous or unlikely it may seem. Secondly, that the commitment and participation of all employees of a company is absolutely necessary and vital. Finally, that the development, planning, implementation, training and updating of the business continuity plan is critical, and in this scenario more than ever. This experience should be capitalized by all companies to develop in a serious and planned way, if they do not already have it, a business continuity plan; and if they do, update it under the successes and mistakes learned during this period.

We are confident that the year 2021 will try to leave behind in the coming months the “new normality” to return to “old normality”. This new reality should give us the opportunity to work on updating and improving the company’s protection plans (all of them). Creating new procedures and processes to strengthen the functioning of the organization can be a significant competitive advantage in the times to come.

Faced with these considerations and lessons learned and to be learned, would it be ridiculous to imagine another “unlikely” scenario that triggers the global and sustained fall of the Internet service for a period of a couple of months? How do you imagine your companies, whatever your activity, without any connectivity for two or three months? No IT servers, no Zoom meetings, no restricted access or access to work files, no data transmission, no email service, no financial transaction systems or connection to banking platforms, etc. …

Don’t worry, this situation only supposed to be a little likely “worst-case scenario“. Nothing more than that.

G5 Integritas has highly trained professionals who can assist you in designing the best protection plans. If you are interested in optimizing the security of your company, we invite you to contact us at: info@g5integritaslatam.com or by visiting our website: www.g5integritaslatam.com