Business Continuity Plan Requirements

This question asks about your plan to keep your business running during disruptions—not just IT disasters, but any event that could interrupt operations like a pandemic, key employee loss, or supplier failure. It's your playbook for maintaining critical business functions when things go wrong. The plan needs a specific owner and must be tested annually to ensure it actually works.

A solid BCP can mean the difference between surviving a crisis and going out of business. Customers, especially in healthcare and education, need confidence that you'll continue providing service during their critical periods. Without a tested BCP, you risk losing major contracts, as many enterprises require vendors to demonstrate resilience. It also protects your revenue—companies with tested BCPs recover 2.5x faster from disruptions.

Many companies confuse BCP with disaster recovery (IT-focused) and miss critical business elements like vendor dependencies, communication plans, and alternate work arrangements. Another mistake is annual 'testing' that's just a document review rather than an actual simulation of disruption scenarios.