ISO 27001 is an international standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that outlines requirements for an information security management system (ISMS). The standard helps organizations manage risks related to information security and ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information assets.
A key requirement of ISO 27001 is to have a business continuity plan in place. The purpose of a business continuity plan is to reduce the impact of disruptive events and ensure critical business functions can continue operating. It provides a documented plan to enable the recovery of business processes and systems after a disruption. Having a comprehensive business continuity plan is crucial for organizations that rely on the availability of information systems and data.
The ISO 27001 business continuity plan contains strategies and procedures to maintain, resume, and recover critical operations following a disruption. It outlines the resources, actions, tasks and data required to manage business continuity risks and recover from loss scenarios. By implementing a robust business continuity plan aligned with ISO 27001, organizations can minimize downtime, ensure regulatory compliance, and improve overall resilience.
Purpose of Business Continuity Plan
The purpose of having a business continuity plan as part of an ISO 27001 information security management system is to ensure the organization can continue operating and delivering critical services in the event of a disaster or disruption. Some key benefits and reasons for having a business continuity plan include:
Minimizing downtime – A business continuity plan helps minimize any disruptions to operations and ensures critical processes can resume quickly.
Maintaining services – It allows an organization to maintain delivery of key products and services to customers.
Protecting reputation – By planning ahead, disruptions can be handled smoothly to maintain customer and stakeholder confidence.
Meeting compliance – Business continuity requirements are part of ISO 27001 certification to demonstrate due diligence.
Identifying threats – The business impact analysis process identifies potential threats and vulnerabilities.
Providing a framework – The plan documents recovery strategies, emergency procedures, testing, training, etc. to handle incidents.
Driving resilience – It forces organizations to evaluate risks and build in resilience. This increases the ability to recover from any incident.
Scope of Business Continuity Plan
The scope of the business continuity plan as per ISO 27001 covers all critical business functions, resources, and stakeholders to ensure continued operations in the event of a disruption. This includes people, assets, technology, facilities, and third parties.
The BCP should identify key personnel and cover succession planning to ensure enough trained staff are available during disruptions (Source: https://hightable.io/beginners-guide-to-iso-27001-business-continuity-policy/). It should outline protection of vital assets like data centers, equipment, and systems. Technology scope encompasses networks, data backups, applications and cybersecurity. Facilities in scope include primary sites, alternate processing sites and failover infrastructure. Dependencies on third parties like cloud providers or suppliers should also be addressed in the plan.
Overall, the BCP scope should cover all critical resources required to deliver prioritized activities and services as per the business impact analysis. It aims to build organizational resilience against disruptions to operations.
Business Impact Analysis
A key component of the business continuity plan is conducting a business impact analysis (Business impact analysis BIA – How to implement it with …). This involves identifying the organization’s critical business functions and processes and determining the impacts and consequences of potential disruptions. The analysis evaluates how critical each business process is for maintaining operations and meeting recovery time objectives.
The BIA identifies recovery priorities, such as the maximum downtime that can be tolerated, the recovery time objectives, and the dependencies between business functions. This enables the organization to determine recovery strategies and resource requirements (ISO 27001:2022 Annex A Control 5.30 – What’s New?).
The BIA provides vital information for developing continuity and recovery plans that focus on time-sensitive business functions. It also informs IT disaster recovery planning by highlighting systems and data that need to be restored quickly. Overall, the BIA enables the organization to gain insight into the potential impacts of disruptions and make informed risk management decisions.
Recovery Strategies
A key component of the business continuity plan is defining recovery strategies to restore critical operations after a disruption. As per ISO 27001, the business continuity plan should outline strategies for backup systems, redundant infrastructure, and alternate sites to facilitate recovery.
Backup systems refer to regularly backing up critical data and information, with secure offsite backups to enable recovery. Redundant infrastructure implies having spare capacity and redundancy in critical systems like power, network, servers etc. This provides failover options if primary systems fail. Alternate sites are backup facilities and workspaces that can be used if the main workspace is inaccessible. This includes identifying alternate worksites for staff.
The recovery strategies should aim to restore prioritized critical business operations within the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) defined during the Business Impact Analysis. The strategies should be regularly tested and aim for recovering operations with minimal data loss, as per the defined Recovery Point Objective (RPO).
Emergency Procedures
The emergency procedures section of the business continuity plan focuses on how the organization will respond to disruptions or emergencies to ensure continuity of critical operations and timely recovery. This involves establishing emergency response procedures, crisis management protocols, and processes for emergency communications.
According to the ISO 27001 standard, the business continuity plan must outline the organization’s procedures for responding to events or disruptions to avoid nonconformities in critical operations and processes. This includes having emergency response strategies for scenarios such as fires, cyber attacks, data breaches, disruption of critical utilities, loss of access to facilities, and other threats that can impact business operations.
The plan should identify key personnel responsible for executing emergency procedures and incident response. It should establish emergency response teams, detail their responsibilities, specify emergency contacts, and outline communication protocols to alert relevant parties of the disruption. This ensures a coordinated crisis response between teams like IT, security, facilities management, HR, legal, PR, and executive leadership.
Emergency communications procedures should outline communication channels, both internal and external, to keep staff, customers, partners, authorities, and other stakeholders informed during a crisis. This includes identifying communication systems that function independently in case normal channels are impacted by the disruption. The plan should specify the timing and content of internal and external communications at various stages of the incident response.
Regular testing of emergency procedures through exercises like fire drills, cyber attack simulations, backup restoration tests, etc. validates the effectiveness of the established procedures. Lessons learned from tests can highlight gaps to be addressed by refining the procedures and strategies.
According to C2, the emergency procedures within a business continuity plan enable a timely and organized incident response that maintains critical operations and communications to minimize disruption.
Testing and Exercises
To ensure the business continuity plan remains effective and up to date, the organization should conduct periodic testing and exercises. This validation through simulations, fire drills, and audits helps evaluate the plan’s completeness, the preparedness of staff, and identify any gaps or issues. According to ISO 27001, an organization must test the established and implemented business continuity plan at planned intervals to ensure its validity and effectiveness.
Some common ways to test the business continuity plan include:
- Simulations – Running mock scenarios and simulations to validate recovery procedures, communication plans, roles and responsibilities.
- Walkthroughs – Talking through the procedures step-by-step to confirm understanding and completeness.
- Technical reviews – Inspecting the technical capabilities needed for continuity and recovery.
- Fire drills – Practicing evacuation from company facilities.
- Call-tree testing – Calling the contact list to ensure they are reachable.
- Offsite backup tests – Testing restoring from offsite backups.
- Audits – Having internal or external auditors evaluate the plan.
Any issues or gaps identified during testing should lead to corrections and improvements in the business continuity plan. The results provide assurance the plan will work in an actual disruption event.
Maintenance
The business continuity plan should be regularly reviewed and updated to ensure it remains effective and up-to-date. According to Secure State (source), the plan should be reviewed at least annually, or whenever there are significant changes to the business such as new processes, systems, or organizational structures. Reviews help identify new risks, ensure recovery strategies are still valid, and incorporate lessons learned from tests or actual incidents.
Maintenance activities should include (source):
- Reviewing and revising business impact analysis
- Updating risk assessments
- Updating continuity and recovery procedures
- Reviewing roles and responsibilities
- Reviewing and updating contact lists
By regularly reviewing and updating the plan, organizations can verify that it remains effective in ensuring business continuity and meeting the organization’s recovery objectives.
Training and Awareness
Educating staff on business continuity procedures and responsibilities is a critical component of an effective ISO 27001 business continuity plan. Training ensures personnel are prepared to enact emergency procedures and recover operations quickly in the event of a disruption. According to [Guide to ISO 27001 Business Continuity (2024 Updated)](https://sprinto.com/blog/iso-27001-business-continuity/), training should cover the organization’s continuity strategies, emergency response processes, individual roles and responsibilities, communication protocols, and more. Exercises to test preparedness may also be conducted.
As part of ISO 27001 compliance, all employees should receive role-specific training on executing the business continuity plan. New hires should be trained as they join the organization. Refresher training should occur periodically to account for staff turnover and evolving threats. By investing in comprehensive training and awareness, organizations can feel confident their personnel know how to respond in a crisis.
Integration with Other Standards
The business continuity plan should be integrated with other standards and management systems, such as ISO 22301 and ISO 9001, to improve overall organizational resilience. According to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), integrating ISO 22301 with other standards can help an organization improve its overall management system and continuity capabilities.
Some key ways the business continuity plan can be integrated with other standards include:
- Aligning the scope and objectives of the business continuity plan with related standards like ISO 22301 for societal security and business continuity management systems.
- Ensuring a complementary and holistic approach across standards to avoid overlaps or gaps.
- Leveraging audits and maturity assessments required by other standards like ISO 9001 to also assess business continuity capabilities.
- Using ISO 22301’s Plan-Do-Check-Act framework to implement, test, and improve business continuity measures.
- Incorporating relevant requirements from other standards into testing, training, and awareness procedures.
- Periodically reviewing how changes to other standards may impact business continuity planning.
Proper integration enables efficient utilization of resources and enhanced resilience. Organizations should engage relevant stakeholders across functions and systems to ensure integration of the business continuity plan with other critical standards and programs.