How business continuity works
Planning starts with a business impact analysis that identifies critical processes, how long each can be down, and how much data loss is tolerable. These become the recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) that drive technology and staffing choices.
The plan then documents alternate ways of working, communication trees, vendor dependencies, and recovery steps. Offline, tested backups are central for cyber scenarios such as ransomware. Exercises, from table-top discussions to full failover tests, show whether the plan works before a real event.
Why it matters for Canadian organizations
Ransomware and supplier outages can halt operations for days. For hospitals, utilities, financial firms, and municipalities, downtime affects the public as well as revenue, and the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security encourages organizations to plan for these disruptions.
Federally regulated financial institutions are expected under OSFI B-13 and related guidance to maintain resilience and recovery capabilities. Others face customer contract terms and insurer questions about backups and recovery. Privacy laws also expect timely restoration of availability and integrity of personal data.
How to implement it
Identify critical systems and set realistic RTOs and RPOs with business owners. Build backups that follow the 3-2-1 idea, with at least one copy offline or immutable, and test restoration regularly rather than assuming it works.
Write clear roles, escalation steps, and communication templates, and rehearse them at least yearly. Align the plan with incident response so technical containment and business decisions happen together. Review it after any major change, acquisition, or new critical supplier. Include key suppliers in your exercises, since their outages become yours.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between business continuity and disaster recovery?
Business continuity covers keeping the whole organization operating, including people, processes, and communications. Disaster recovery is the technical part, focused on restoring IT systems and data. Disaster recovery plans sit inside the broader continuity plan. Both should be coordinated with incident response so cyber events are handled consistently.
What are RTO and RPO?
Recovery time objective is the maximum acceptable time a system can be down. Recovery point objective is the maximum acceptable amount of data loss, measured in time. Together they define how quickly and how recently systems must be restored.
How often should a continuity plan be tested?
At least once a year, and after major changes such as new systems or suppliers. Mix simple table-top exercises with technical restore tests so that both decisions and recovery procedures are checked. Document the results and fix any gaps found.
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