A Business Continuity Measurement Standard – Coming of Age

Business Continuity Maturity Model Introduction

Overview
A Business Continuity Measurement Standard – Coming of Age
Compared to most other business disciplines, business continuity is relatively new. Born in the 1960’s as “disaster recovery”, this discipline has grown considerably to where now, in this post 9/11 era, it is regularly discussed in boardrooms across the global corporate landscape. And yet today, we still do not have any meaningful tools to objectively and consistently measure the organization’s disaster-readiness or state-of-preparedness.

Virtual Corporation has underwritten the development of this public domain model to fill this gap. There are several primary goals to be achieved:

1. Provide a diagnostic tool for objective evaluation of business continuity program effectiveness.
2. Generate consistent data from which meaningful benchmark analyses could be drawn..
3. Answer the following key questions for senior management:
   a. Where are we now? What level of BC program maturity do we currently possess?
   b. What is the target we are shooting for? What level of BC program maturity is our ultimate goal?
   c. What evolutionary path do we follow to get there? How should we progress most effectively to the next Level? e.g., Let’s crawl, then walk, then run.

It is actually through Goal #1 above that we will ultimately know that business continuity has “come of age”. Imagine the day when a Wall Street investor makes an informed decision to invest his or her money in a company because the company’s “Continuity Rating” was above the recognized standard for companies in that industry, just like investors today make similar decisions based on balance sheet and other financial ratings. Equally, imagine the day when regulators and insurers utilize standard methods and tools to assess the health of an organization’s business continuity program, unlike today, where in many cases compliance guidelines are conflicting, confusing, or just plain inappropriate.

This is the future to which Virtual Corporation dedicates this important landmark work.

The entire model can be downloaded at no charge from Virtual Corporation’s website – http://www.virtual-corp.net.