The full name of this standard is ISO 22301:2019 Security and resilience – Business continuity management systems – Requirements. ISO 22301 is the international standard for Business Continuity Management (BCM). It is a comprehensive approach to organizational resilience and helps organizations cope with incidents that affect their business-critical processes and activities. Published by the International Organization for Standardization, ISO 22301 is designed to help organizations prevent, prepare for, respond to and recover from unexpected and disruptive incidents.
To do so, the standard provides a practical framework for setting up and managing an effective business continuity management system. ISO 22301 aims to safeguard an organization from a wide range of potential threats and disruptions.
ISO22301 certification should be considered essential to any organization legally required to engage in contingency planning, including utilities, transport, health, and essential public services. Whether you need to implement the standard to remain in compliance with industry regulations or not, pursuing ISO22301 certification can help your organization develop resiliency and improve risk management.
Benefits of business continuity
Comply with legal requirements. There are more and more countries defining laws and regulations requiring business continuity compliance. And beyond government interests, private businesses (e.g., financial institutions) are also requiring their suppliers and partners to implement business continuity solutions. And the good news is that ISO 22301 provides a perfect framework and methodology to support compliance with these requirements – by reducing administrative and operational effort, as well as the number of penalties to be paid.
Achieve marketing advantage. If your company is ISO 22301 certified and your competitors aren’t, you will have an advantage over them when it comes to customers who are sensitive about keeping the continuity of their operations, and the delivery of their products and services. Additionally, such certification can help you get new customers, by making it easier to demonstrate that you are among the best in the industry, leading to increased market share and higher profits.
Reduce dependence on individuals. More often than not, a company’s critical activities rely on just a few people who are hard to replace – a situation painfully demonstrated when these people leave the organization. Executives who are aware of this can make use of business continuity practices to become far less dependent on those individuals (either because of implemented replacement solutions or by documenting related tasks), meaning you can prevent a lot of headaches when someone leaves the organization.
Prevent large-scale damage. In a world of real-time services and transactions, every minute of down service costs money – a lot of money. And, even if your business is not so sensitive to small periods of unavailability, disruptive incidents will cost you. By implementing business continuity practices compliant with ISO22301, you will have a sort of insurance policy. Whether by preventing disruptive incidents from happening or by becoming capable of faster recovery –your company will save money. And, the best thing of all is that your investment in ISO 22301 is far smaller than the cost savings you’ll achieve.
QUALITY SISTEMA CERTS will ease your process of getting ISO 22301 certification with the help of the most efficient team.