Optimize a BCDR strategy for 2021 and beyond
What has — and hasn’t — changed?
Changes to industry standards, regulations and products reflect how BCDR and related disciplines, such as incident response and emergency management, have evolved with the coronavirus pandemic.
No major changes related to COVID-19 have occurred to primary BC and DR standards, such as ISO 22301:2019, and no specific pandemic standard has emerged yet. ISO updates its standards every three to five years, so changes related to the effects of COVID-19 might occur in the next year or so.
Because they were developed or updated fairly recently, standards related to business continuity plan components, such as business impact analyses, supply chain protection and cloud technology, also remain mostly unchanged However, many BCDR vendors have added services to their portfolios, such as pandemic plan development. Some have added software modules to address pandemics, developed training and awareness programs based on pandemic lessons learned, and offer guidance documents on preparing for future pandemics.
Changes to a BCDR strategy and related plans will be different for every company, but may affect the following:
- remote working models;
- how employees perform their work;
- how employees interact with each other;
- office space organization;
- how the business maintains employee health and safety;
- customer needs;
- how the business interacts with customers; and
- supply chains.