Strengthen & Transform Business Continuity and Information Security Management with SharePoint
For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), maintaining effective business continuity and information security management processes can be challenging. Limited resources coupled with increasing regulatory requirements and growing cybersecurity risks place pressure on organisations to demonstrate compliance while maintaining operational efficiency. Microsoft’s SharePoint provides a practical and highly cost-effective solution that enables SMEs to manage critical information, improve governance, and increase visibility across their management systems
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We have helped many organisations to create SharePoint sites on their own M365 platform to significantly improve their management processes to increase transparency and reduce maintenance burden. Our approach focusses on leaving you with a SharePoint site on your M365, so there’s no additional costs, no additional suppliers and no recurring costs – it’s yours to town, take forward and adapt.
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Our solutions leverage the more advanced features of SharePoint including:
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Document Libraries: For version tracking, establishing ownership and automating periodic reviews)
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Lists For risk registers, establishing ownership responsibilities and triggering assurance and confirmation exercises
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Views: great for filtering data for specific purposes
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Linked Views: Great for correlating connected information (like linking issue logs with affected documents or controls)
How we work with you to deliver an automated ISMS / BCMS with SharePoint
We have always focussed on providing our customers with development and deployment options that fit with the way they prefer to work with us. To develop and deploy an automated Business Continuity or Information Security Management System using SharePoint we provide two paths to achieve that:
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βThe mentoring approach. In this approach we guide you through the development process. We'll work with you online and show you how to create the various SharePoint components that will construct your SharePoint management system for business continuity and / or information security management. This not only gives you all of the benefits of putting your management systems on "autopilot", you'll also acquire SharePoint development skills.
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βLet us do the "heavy lifting" for you - we'll develop a the SharePoint solution for you. This is the quickest route to automating your ISMS or BCMS - the mentoring approach normally takes somewhat longer because of the learning curve and the fact you have a "day job".
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Whatever option you choose, you will be able to ditch the spreadsheets, emails and other "information sifting work so that you can concentrate on the management issues associated with business continuity and information security β
What's involved in developing automated ISMS / BCMS with SharePoint?
Whatever option you choose to develop your ICMS or BCMS with SharePoint, the project will involve several steps:β
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Preparing content for transition. You will no doubt have a lot of existing content and we'll need to ensure that we can reliably transition that content into a SharePoint site. The majority of work relates to spreadsheets, ensuring that we can correctly map these into structured tables so that we can create SharePoint Lists from them. Once we have done this, we can create lists from the formatted spreadsheets
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Importing documents and other non-structured content,. You may have policies, plans and other narrative style documents in repositories like One Drive folders. We'll migrate these documents to a SharePoint Document Library which will release the full power of SharePoint document management and collaboration capabilities including:
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Version history
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Content types
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Workflows for review and confirmation
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Enforcing retention requirements
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Custom views to filter and navigate larger document collections
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Augment metadata (that's data about a specific document) to enable categorisation, filtering and different views of the list
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Sensitivity labels
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Clearly establishing ownership (including RACI indexes if you them - see point 3, below
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.... and a few other "bells and whistles" that make life easier!
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Then, for both document libraries and lists we add additional fields such as drop down lists which can support workflows and "Person" fields that will allow the SharePoint site to communicate with the wider organisation, enabling your site to send email reminders and tell you when things have changed
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Validation rules to ensure that right information is always captured
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Setting rules and bulk updates. Bulk updates allow you to change field values of whole groups of documents and list items. This is really useful if you want to change the status of a set of controls or documents to something like "Review Required" to trigger a rule
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Rules allow you to create simple workflows to support a review and confirmation process. A rule would be something like "when the 'Status' field is changed to 'Review Required' send an email to the person in the 'Owner' field. This quickly automates a process that, in many organisations, is operated manually with emails, spreadsheets and a whole lot a copy-paste operations
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All of the features we have mentioned above are straight "out of the box" SharePoint features, requiring no coding whatsoever. Typically we can achieve this for in a week or so (although, as we pointed out earlier, factoring in the learning curve considerations the mentoring approach may take longer)
Your ISMS or BCMS is always on YOUR SharePoint
Just to be clear - this not a hosted solution - your ISMS or BCMS stays on your organisations SharePoint installation - our job is to help you build it. You have complete control and your organisations SharePoint conventions, standards and and policies will always apply
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Equally important, because you own it, there's no hosting or support fees involved. It's yours with no "middleman".
How SharePoint Libraries, Lists & Views Transform Management Processes
βOne of SharePoint’s most valuable features is its document libraries. Business continuity plans, risk assessments, policies, procedures, and audit evidence are often stored across multiple locations, making it difficult to ensure staff are working from the latest version. SharePoint document libraries provide a centralised repository where documents can be securely stored, version-controlled, and easily accessed by authorised colleagues and partners. Automated version history ensures that changes are tracked, reducing the risk of outdated or incorrect information being used and distributed.
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Another powerful capability is the use of SharePoint Lists. Lists can be configured to manage business continuity exercises, information security risks, corrective actions, supplier assessments, or compliance obligations. Instead of relying on spreadsheets that quickly become outdated or difficult to maintain, SharePoint Lists provide structured data management with custom fields, status tracking, and automated workflows. This enables organisations to standardise processes and maintain a single source of truth for management system activities.
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SharePoint Views augment lists, further enhancing usability and transparency. Different stakeholders often require different perspectives on the same information. For example, senior management may need a high-level dashboard showing open risks and overdue actions, while operational teams require detailed task views. SharePoint Views allow organisations to filter, group, and display information according to user needs without duplicating data. This improves decision-making and ensures relevant information is readily available to those who need it.
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The benefits of these features go way beyond document storage. One of the most significant advantages is time saving. Organised content, automated notifications, workflows, and streamlined information retrieval reduce administrative overhead and minimise manual tracking. People spend less time searching for documents or updating spreadsheets and more time focusing on value-added activities. Audit preparation, management reviews, and compliance reporting become significantly more efficient.
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Equally important is the enhanced transparency of compliance status. Real-time dashboards and status tracking provide immediate visibility into outstanding actions, risk levels, audit status, and controls effectiveness. This transparency enables organisations to proactively address issues before they escalate and provides leadership with confidence that business continuity and information security requirements are being effectively managed.
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For SMEs seeking to align with standards such as ISO 22301 or ISO 27001, SharePoint provides a scalable platform that supports governance, accountability, and continual improvement. By leveraging SharePoint capabilities including document libraries, lists, and views, organisations can transform manual processes into efficient, transparent, and auditable management systems that strengthen resilience and support long-term business success.
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