Business Continuity Plan Test Templates - making business continuity plan testing straightforward & credible
If you need to develop a business continuity plan test for your organisation, our BCP testing templates will kick-start the test development process, ensuring that you can deliver credible and meaningful business continuity plan tests that build confidence that your organisation can recover from disruptions.
Our business continuity plan testing templates provide everything required to prepare and deliver realistic business continuity tests. The template pack includes:
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An introductory training course that takes you through each stage of business continuity testing
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A facilitators guide to help with setting up the test
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A library of "oven-ready" business continuity test playbooks for a range of incident scenarios
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A Business Continuity Test Report Template to capture test results and lessons learned
As well as a world-class toolkit for developing business continuity plan tests - they are also a learning resource. The training course and templates will help you to acquire new knowledge and skills.
See the video opposite for a visual walkthrough of our Business Continuity Plan Testing Templates
Business Continuity Plan Testing - where to start
There are several ways to test and confirm the effectiveness of a business continuity plan - the two most popular are:
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Business Continuity Plan Desktop tests. These are also called "walkthrough tests". The basic approach is to get the response team together, with their plans (perhaps using a recent incident) and discuss whether your business continuity would be effective in a similar situation. Desktop tests can also be augmented with challenges to stretch participants.
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Scenario based tests aim to create more realism into the process, focussing on the detail of a specific type of incident, such as cyber attack, with a simulated timeline that reflects the duration and sequence of events that often occur in specific incident scenarios
Our business continuity plan testing templates will provide you with tools and guidance you need to develop both scenario and desktop walkthrough tests.
Business Continuity Plan Walkthrough Test - the essentials
Testing Incident Discovery & Notification
Evaluate the scope of the plan documentation, response team knowledge & preparedness of the response team process supporting tec
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Incident notification
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Mobilisation & assembly of Incident Management team
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Establishing scene control
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Emergency services notification
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Accounting for staff contractors and visitors
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Staff advice & assistance
Testing Operational Recovery
Walkthrough the response and recovery plans with individual response team members or response team leaders (i.e. those responsible for critical functions like customer service, finance or call centre) ensuring that the following (where appropriate) are factored into their plans:
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Alternative workplace Accommodation: Relocation logistics, capacity & resources available at alternative working location
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Remote working capabilities
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Customer Management activities
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Handling & prioritisation of customer commitments
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Sourcing replacements for damaged or destroyed equipment / stock / raw materials.
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Order management / fulfilment resumption / work-in-progress recovery
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Relationships with other parts of the organisation (such as the incident management team, facilities management and information technology)
Testing Internal & External Communication
Ensure that there is clear ownership of all aspects of communication (including ownership & understanding of the platforms used for messaging) for the following:
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Incident responders & Recovery Teams
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Communication nd information sharing the wider organisation
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Social Media
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Mainstream Media
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Regulatory Agencies
Confirming Infrastructure Recovery Plans
Ensure that the envisaged procedures for the following are in place, are proven and understood by the recovery leadership for each function below
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Information systems recovery
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Voice communications recovery
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Establishing operations at an alternative workplace
Business Continuity Plan Scenario test - the essentials
If your business continuity plan is more mature and you are confident in the results of walkthrough tests, you are probably ready for a more rigorous test based around a specific scenario and where the whole response organisation assumes the roles that they would be expected to adopt during a major incident. This type of test is often called a simulation because it focusses on evaluating the plan in a situation that realistically mimics a real incident such as cyber-attack or damage to property. This type of test requires significantly more planning and facilitation than a basic plan walkthrough.
The overarching objective here is to create an impact scenario of sufficient magnitude that would require the necessary business continuity plans or incident response plans to be invoked. There are several factors to consider in meeting this objective:
Scale of the incident scenario
An example of incident scale might be, "will our business continuity arrangements mitigate staff unavailability of 35% either through travel difficulties or a virus outbreak", The scale of the incident should be challenging enough to warrantplan invocation but not so servere that it is impossible to address
Duration of the incident scenario
This is something can be achallenge because the time normally allocated to a scenario based incident test is normally much less than the duration of an actual incident. The incident simulation scenario has to be designed so that participants are aware of the actal duration of the incident as part of their response activities. Having some guidance on the real-life impact duration of different types of incident scenario can be helpful in creating realistic scenario tests. (our business continuity plan testing templates provide some guidance on the impact duration of actual incidents.
Pacing the incident scenario
Pacing the incident simulation is an art rather than a science. All tests are constrained by time, and this is one area where some accommodation has to be made. Many major incidents occur over a timeframe of days – and sometime weeks. Clearly, it’s not practical to keep participants involved in a BCP test for that period. The time constraint requires that some thought is given to how quickly participants are advised of impact (bearing in mind that establishing the overall impact of a real incident, could take several hours or days). This can be overcome by creating inserts that provide updates on overall impact and at the same time inform test participants that, for the pruposes of the scanrio test several hours have passed since the last update
Establishing the expected outcome of the response to the incident scenario
During this type of Business Continuity Plan test, the test timeline will include expected actions to be taken. The expected action should be those outlined in the business continuity or incident response plan and taken in reaction to impacts and events that emerge during the test. Expected actions will be monitored by the BCP test support team who would be expected to follow the test timeline as the incident simulation unfolds. Establishing expected actions in advance forms a major part of the BCP test plan and the BCP test Results report.
Organising the facilitation of the incident scenario
A simulation test also requires more organisation than a walkthrough test. They normally involve more participants and there will be significantly more interaction between participants as they perform their designated roles. For this reason, any simulation will require some support to effectively coordinate and manage the test. The support roles required are:
Test Facilitator: the simulation test needs a facilitator to guide the test and ensure that the test timeline is adhered to.
Observer(s): During a simulation test, because of the number of participants, it can be challenging to capture issues and opportunities for improvement. One or more people dedicated solely to scrutinising what is going on during the test and evaluating whether correct actions are being taken so that lessons learned from the test are captured and logged.
The overall principle with testing your incident response and business continuity plans is to start simple & gradually build more complex tests as your confidence and expertise. Having the right tools to support the development of a business continuity plan test can ensure that your tests are as effective as they can be and are developed in line with accepted good practice
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