Team Establishment

Create an organization-wide structure to manage and respond to a variety of incidents and disruptions. Designate key roles and responsibilities and ensure the appropriate processes are in place.

Your business continuity structure should:

• Integrate with other response structures within your organization (e.g., security or IT)
• Be flexible and scalable, to handle incidents of varying scope and effect
• Be documented in an organization-wide plan.

Process Development

Ensure your response processes include:

• Identifying people responsible for strategic oversight, tactical, and operational roles
• Establishing response priorities
• Determining who is authorized to activate and manage a response and to whom that responsibility can be delegated
• Setting up notification, activation, and escalation procedures.

Team Structure

Your organization should evaluate their response structure at the strategic, tactical, and operational levels.

For some organizations, one response team may manage all levels. However, larger organizations may need to create separate teams to manage these responsibilities.

To ensure personnel know what to do, that arrangements are suitable, and that any gaps are identified, conduct regular exercises.

Strategic Response Team

Your strategic response team takes an organization-wide approach to addressing issues. It is typically headed by top management and referred to as a crisis management team. Such a team requires flexibility and must include experienced managers with the authority to utilize the organization's resources to the fullest during the response.

Tactical Response Team

The Tactical Response Team manages and coordinates processes to deliver critical functions and allocate resources accordingly.

Operational Response Team

Your operational response team ensures critical functions remain operational or performs the necessary steps to restore them.

Plan Review

Regularly review the effectiveness of response plans, both in exercises and real-life incidents, to ensure they remain suitable.