Glossary
Business Continuity Plan
A business continuity plan answers: How do we keep running if systems go down? Who does what? Where do we work? How do we communicate? Planning for disaster before disaster strikes.
What is Business Continuity Plan?
A plan for maintaining business operations during and after a disaster or security incident.
Why Should You Care?
A Business Continuity Plan directly determines how quickly an organization recovers from incidents and whether critical operations survive at all. Without one, a ransomware attack, data center failure, or natural disaster can halt revenue-generating systems indefinitely—customers switch to competitors, employees have no direction, and compliance obligations go unmet. Organizations with tested BCPs typically resume critical functions far faster; those without may take weeks or never fully recover.
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Real-World Example
When WannaCry ransomware struck in 2017, organizations with documented recovery procedures—including offline backups and pre-identified alternate processes—restored operations far more quickly than those improvising from scratch. Similarly, financial institutions that maintain predetermined failover procedures and regularly tested backup sites can switch operations with minimal customer disruption when infrastructure fails, whereas institutions lacking these plans suffer extended outages and potential regulatory penalties.
How to Protect Against Business Continuity Plan
- 1.
Create or update business continuity plan
- 2.
Test the plan annually
Related Terms
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