ISO 22301 – 2019 Business Continuity Management System

Guidance for Consulting and Training provides qualification and training for the international standard for the Business Continuity Management System – ISO 22301: 2019 for managing, maintaining, and professionally improving business continuity, protecting it from all disruptions types, and reducing the likelihood of their occurrence in Saudi institutions. It was built to protect institutions from threats related to business interruption that may arise due to unexpected disruptions or disasters. Loss of revenue, collapse of data risks, and failure to provide normal customer services according to service level agreements will cause disruptions to your institution. Therefore, the institution will be driven by the Business Continuity Management Systems Certification for the best ways to prepare for such possibilities. Regardless of the type and size of the organization, the extent to which these requirements are applied depends on the organization’s work environment and complexity.

Establishing an administrative system that helps business owners direct their businesses and activities towards the organization’s goals is one of the fundamentals of the success of the business continuity system in institutions, as the level of complexity in management systems varies between institutions according to their fields. In small companies, the administrative system is usually simple; Due to the small number of employees and the limited administrative and operational processes, the management is in the hands of its owner who determines the function of each employee in the institution and the way he contributes to achieving the institution’s goals without the need for complex processes and procedures. Large institutions need a complex and high-level administrative system to verify the proper functioning of operations and control monitoring processes to achieve their goals and fulfill their legal obligations.

The term management system is relatively new to business continuity system professionals despite its widespread use in other professional specialties, as it was used in this field to help institutions direct business and activities towards their goals; These systems follow best practices to organize and implement operations, and work to manage resources, policies, production and employees.

A management system is defined as a managerial function of developing an organizational structure, a framework of processes and procedures to ensure that an organization can fulfill all the tasks required to achieve business objectives. It is concerned with providing a 4-part model (to establish, operate, maintain, and improve) of the management system and implementation capabilities consistent with managing expectations. It covers many aspects of an organization’s operations, such as financial success, safe operation, product quality, customer relations, legislative and regulatory compliance, labor management, etc.

Benefits of the International Standard for Business Continuity Management – ISO 22301

• Mitigate risks, limit business disruptions, and establish appropriate controls to manage or eliminate those risks.
• Consistency of service and enhance the organization’s reputation and credibility.
• Customer confidence and providing new business opportunities.
• Flexibility during interruptions or economic downturns as happened during the Corona period.
• Organizational change by increasing confidence in the organization’s recovery plans, and ensuring smart and appropriate contingency cases.
• Enhancing internal management and continuous internal improvement through audits.
• Maintaining acceptable standards for customer delivery.
• Greater visibility of business risks externally and internally across the region, enables the organization to adopt a preventive approach more quickly to reduce the impact of incidents and downtime to the lowest level when exposed to any incident.
• Strengthens management commitment and ensures that customers, suppliers, and employees are shown commitment and take business continuity management seriously.
• Reduces financial losses by reducing costs.
• Maximizes quality and performance to achieve competitive gains, attract more investors, and improve relationships with stakeholders and interested parties.
• Increase the ability to meet regulatory requirements and improve the ability to win competitions.
• Enhance the ability to respond to disruptions by providing costs to mitigate their impact.
• Clarifies the duty of care to employees and increases their engagement and understanding regardless of what happens.
• Ensure that adequate resources are available for business continuity testing and delivery.

ISO 22301 Business Continuity Management System Contents (Elements)

• Scope
• Architectural References
• Terms and Definitions
• Organizational Context
• Leadership
• Planning
• Support
• Operations
• Evaluation
• Improvement

ISO 22301 Business Continuity Management Principles

• Risk Analysis Study.
• Business Impact Analysis.
• Business Continuity Governance.
• Exercises and Tests.
• Training, Awareness, and Communication.
• Business Continuity Management Assessment.

How to Obtain ISO 22301:2019 Business Continuity Certification

Awarding Process and Gap Analysis: Guidance Consulting and Training provides certification, assessment, and training services following the current international standard ISO 22301 requirements. However, before the certificate, an audit is conducted to identify the critical or high-risk areas of your organization’s current business continuity management system and identify vulnerabilities. Our auditors can help you define the scope of your ISO 22301 gap analysis, and make you flexible to focus on the most critical areas of your organization’s operations.

Integrated Assessment: Guidance Consulting & Training offers an integrated assessment service for organizations with multiple management systems including quality management, environment, occupational health and safety, and information security management; benefiting from consistent assessment and control programs, while avoiding duplication of effort to reduce costs.

Verification Services: Certification, verification, and validation services based on leading international standards on health and safety, environment, sustainability, energy management, information security, and much more.

Remote Audit: Face-to-face audits are not always practical or effective as we offer a remote audit service. It is effective, flexible, and gives you technical expertise when and where you need it. Whether you need to minimize travel, have facilities in difficult-to-reach areas, or have complex infrastructure, our team of experts offers you a continuous certification service to support your organization. Anytime. Anywhere.

The 3 Steps of ISO 22301 Strategy

1. Identify a potential business strategy that will reduce the identified risks and assess the risks to levels that management finds acceptable. 3 categories of business strategy must be addressed:

• Risk Mitigation: Identify opportunities to reduce the likelihood of a disruption and strategies to reduce its impact.
• Incident Response: Define the incident response process through actions independent of threats, charter the team (with essential and alternate staff) responsible for leading the response to a disruptive event, and define the methods that the active team will follow, meet, assess situations, and make decisions.
• Recovery Activities and Resources: Identify alternative sources of resources or alternative methods of performing the required activities to meet the variances and obligations related to the disruption (alternative facilities, personnel, equipment, IT, third parties) and manual solutions in case of unavailability of application resources.

2. Identify the resources needed to implement each category of the business continuity strategy:

• Estimate the cost associated with implementing and maintaining the strategy.
• Include all resources identified in the business impact analysis required during the disruption, such as people, information, data, facilities, transportation, partners, and suppliers.
• When selecting appropriate resources, multiple strategic options must be considered (with pros, cons, and cost estimates) to address each risk. This enables management’s approach to measure investment requirements against the desire for organizational risk to identify the most efficient strategy.

Qualifying for ISO 22301:2019 Business Continuity will help you manage challenging situations in your organization, maintain its image, and gain a competitive advantage.

Guidance for Consulting and Training

We have the knowledge and experience to help institutions and individuals comply with the requirements of the Saudi Standards and Quality Organization, the Food and Drug Authority, and other entities that impose legal and mandatory requirements in the Saudi market.