Training Course 3-Business Continuity Plan

Business Continuity Plan

Pdf Summary

Oakleaf Group’s Business Continuity Plan (BCP) defines how the company will maintain or rapidly resume operations after a significant disruptive event affecting facilities, systems, or services. The plan applies across the full Business Continuity Management System scope and emphasizes employee safety, protection of property, assessment of operational/financial impact, and safeguarding company data and records. Key coverage areas include data backup and recovery, critical applications/systems, alternative communications, alternate work locations, critical suppliers, and annual exercising/testing.<br /><br />The strategy is based on business impact analysis and risk assessment/treatment. Unacceptable risks require preventive actions (per the Risk Treatment Plan), scenario planning, and defined incident responses (per the Incident Response Plan). Maximum Acceptable Outage (MAO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) are defined for core services such as email (MAO 4 hours), remote desktop, internet, file access, SharePoint, analytics, and third-party platforms (e.g., Salesforce).<br /><br />Critical infrastructure includes remote desktop servers, domain controllers, file servers, ADFS, and firewalls, relying on redundancy and image-based or file backups. Backups include daily and long-term retention for file servers via CommVault with offsite storage in Google Nearline; Office 365 data uses Microsoft cloud retention; local machines are backed up hourly via Backblaze.<br /><br />An Emergency Response Team is activated when needed, led by the COO (or IT Team Lead as alternate), with defined roles, contacts, reporting paths, and decision authorities (including CEO control of public communications). Evacuation assembly points are specified for Chevy Chase and Bethesda offices, with prioritized communication methods (mobile, phone, email, messaging).<br /><br />Recovery sites are mirrored between Chevy Chase and Bethesda with staged network/security equipment. Supplier continuity focuses on Dataprise and Salesforce through escalation contacts and contractual continuity expectations. The plan considers multiple disaster scenarios (e.g., power/internet outages, storms, fire, pandemic) and mandates annual walkthrough testing with documented results and corrective actions.

Keywords

Business Continuity Plan (BCP)

Business Continuity Management System (BCMS)

Business Impact Analysis (BIA)

Risk assessment and treatment

Incident Response Plan

Recovery Time Objective (RTO)

Maximum Acceptable Outage (MAO)

Data backup and disaster recovery

Emergency Response Team (ERT)

Alternate work locations and recovery sites