Although a key purpose of a business continuity plan is to focus on minimizing and managing the aftermath of a disruptive incident, it is critical to ensure that the plan also includes preventative measures that can be implemented and provide some redundancy against failure. HENCE it is recommended that attention be given to identifying the types of disruptive incidents to which the organisation could be subject, and arranging them by likely frequency and potential impact on the organisation.

Factors such as GEOGRAPHIC and physical location, country and civil stability, the actual products and services offered, among other things, are likely to influence the types of disruptions listed, and how they are ranked. For example, tropical storms and hurricanes frequently occur across most of the Caribbean – from the Bahamas to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and so should feature prominently in plans developed in those countries. However, for plans developed in Curaçao or Guyana, for example, that specific type of storm might be CONSIDERED a rare occurrence, as those countries generally lie outside the HURRICANE belt.

Within the context of an IT/ICT business continuity plan, disruptive incidents may be scheduled or unexpected, or may be internal to the network, or due to external forces. Examples of disruptive incidents that could affect an organisation’s IT/ICT infrastructure and ought to be listed and considered would include, but not limited to:

• Electrical outages
• Equipment damage and malfunction
• Software glitches
• The effects of system breaches/network hacking
• Equipment/system servicing, upgrades, changeovers

Although a key purpose of a business continuity plan is to focus on minimizing and managing the aftermath of a disruptive incident, it is critical to ensure that the plan also includes preventative measures that can be implemented and provide some redundancy against failure. Hence it is recommended that attention be given to identifying the types of disruptive incidents to which the organisation could be subject, and arranging them by likely frequency and potential impact on the organisation.

Factors such as geographic and physical location, country and civil stability, the actual products and services offered, among other things, are likely to influence the types of disruptions listed, and how they are ranked. For example, tropical storms and hurricanes frequently occur across most of the Caribbean – from the Bahamas to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and so should feature prominently in plans developed in those countries. However, for plans developed in Curaçao or Guyana, for example, that specific type of storm might be considered a rare occurrence, as those countries generally lie outside the hurricane belt.

Within the context of an IT/ICT business continuity plan, disruptive incidents may be scheduled or unexpected, or may be internal to the network, or due to external forces. Examples of disruptive incidents that could affect an organisation’s IT/ICT infrastructure and ought to be listed and considered would include, but not limited to: