Business continuity planning ensures your UAE organization can operate through disruptions. Here's a practical framework for building resilience.
Business continuity planning (BCP) ensures your organization can maintain essential operations during and after disruptions — whether cyberattacks, infrastructure failures, natural events, or health crises. For UAE businesses, where regional geopolitical dynamics and extreme weather events add to standard business risks, BCP is not optional.
Building a Business Continuity Framework
Start with a Business Impact Analysis (BIA): identify your critical business processes, the systems that support them, and the maximum tolerable downtime for each. This analysis drives your recovery priorities and investment decisions. For most UAE businesses, financial transactions, customer-facing services, and communication systems are highest priority.
Recovery Strategies
Design recovery strategies for each critical process. Options range from hot standby (immediate failover with zero downtime) to warm standby (recovery in hours) to cold recovery (days). The appropriate strategy depends on the BIA results and budget. Cloud-based DR has made hot and warm standby affordable for businesses that previously could only afford cold recovery.
Testing and Maintenance
A BCP that hasn't been tested is unreliable. Conduct tabletop exercises quarterly (team discusses response to scenarios), functional exercises semi-annually (test specific recovery procedures), and full-scale exercises annually (simulate a complete disruption). Update the plan after every test and after any significant change to your technology or business environment.
Bayden develops and manages business continuity plans for UAE organizations, providing the technical infrastructure, regular testing, and ongoing maintenance that ensures your business can weather any disruption.
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