Business Continuity Planning

All businesses are threatened by unplanned disruptions to their operations. Business continuity, at its core, is how Central Piedmont will continue operating when normal operating procedures are not possible.

The primary objective of business continuity is to develop strategies to recover, resume, and maintain all critical business processes as quickly as possible in order to minimize the impact of a disruption on the college. Generally speaking, it is all about resiliency.

For most Central Piedmont divisions and/or departments, service to our students and community would be impacted in the event that our critical processes and systems were disrupted for a period of time. Through business continuity planning and preparation, we are able to enhance both our capacity to maintain critical processes during a disruption as well as our capability to quickly resume business processes after a disruption. The goal of business continuity planning is to enable Central Piedmont to continue its mission despite a disruption.

Business continuity planning is a proactive approach to enhance our understanding of the connections between critical processes and how a disruption will impact those processes as well as the college. Through planning, we develop a Business Continuity Plan which includes a predetermined strategy outlining how the college will continue (or resume), restore, and recover critical processes in the event of a business disruption.

Through this planning, we are able to look at a ‘snapshot’ of all the processes that the college performs annually and then link those processes to the resources required to perform those processes. In order to capture this snapshot, we use the business impact analysis (BIA) process.

Creating a Business Continuity Plan requires these four main steps:

1. Risk Assessment: Central Piedmont will identify risks that can adversely affect an entity’s resources or image. Central Piedmont will then assess these risks to determine the potential impacts, enabling Central Piedmont to determine the most effective use of resources to reduce these potential impacts.

Working with department leaders, Central Piedmont will identify, develop, and implement information-gathering activities to identify risk and threats. Remember, each department is the expert on their functions and their own best advocate — we rely on you to help best identify your biggest risks. 

During this process we also evaluate the effectiveness of existing controls and safeguards, and identify resilience strategies to reduce Central Piedmont's risks and/or mitigate the potential impact of risk.

2. Business Impact Analysis: Once the risk assessment is complete, Central Piedmont will identify and prioritize its functions and processes in order to ascertain which ones will have the greatest impact should they not be available. Central Piedmont will assess the resources required to support the business impact analysis process, and then analyze those findings to ascertain any gaps between the entity’s requirements and its ability to delivery those requirements.

The BIA findings are intended to assist management in evaluating critical issues and determining priorities, such as:

• What are the priorities for the resumption of operations among Central Piedmont's critical processes?
• How soon must time-sensitive operations resume avoiding significant adverse impacts to Central Piedmont and its students/faculty/staff?
• What specific resources are required to support time-sensitive operations?
• What are the supporting applications and dependencies, the key third parties, and associated vital records?
• What is the potential for financial and operational impacts after an interruption or disruption?

 3. Develop Business Continuity Strategies: Select cost-effective strategies to reduce deficiencies as identified during the risk assessment and business impact analysis processes.

Central Piedmont will use the data collected during the risk assessment and business impact analysis processes to identify the available continuity and recovery strategies for Central Piedmont's operations that will meet recovery time and recovery point objectives.

Central Piedmont will identify supply chain issues, for both suppliers and customers, from the business impact analysis that may affect the selection of a recovery strategy. Central Piedmont will then assess the cost of implementing identified strategies through a cost/benefit analysis.

4. Continuity of Operations Plan Development and Implementation: Create and document plans to be used during an incident that will enable Central Piedmont to continue to function. Design, develop, and implement recovery strategies, define the structure for plan documentation, and coordinate the effort to document recovery plans for Central Piedmont's operations and the supporting infrastructure.

As part of the development and implementation, Central Piedmont will also establish and maintain a training and awareness program that will result in personnel being able to respond to incidents in a calm and efficient manner.

A business impact analysis is the first process of business continuity planning. Fundamentally, the business impact analysis allows us to learn how the college functions on a day-to-day basis — or during ‘business as usual’. The data collected during the BIA process allows us to analyze the potential risks (or vulnerabilities) to our critical processes as well as evaluate how a disruption could impact the college. We are then able to prioritize our critical processes and resources which can be used during recovery. The key to the BIA process is found in the criticality prioritization of all functions and resources as they relate to the operations of the college.

During a business impact analysis (BIA), the impacts of a disruption on critical processes are identified. The BIA findings are intended to assist management in evaluating critical issues and determining priorities as well as enhance our understanding of the maximum amount of time critical processes can be inoperable.

The first step involves gathering information. Business Continuity personnel review organizational charts, observe daily work flow, and interview department managers and employees in order to identify critical processes and significant dependencies from an enterprise-wide perspective. Data collection methods include stakeholder interviews, BIA questionnaire forms, and workshops.

Business continuity personnel work directly with departments to determine what they consider critical in the event that the department is affected by a business disruption.

By asking questions such as, “What would be considered the top essential and critical processes to carrying out the operations of the department?” and “If there was an interruption to the delivery of these critical processes, then what’s the impact to Central Piedmont?" we are able to not only identify the critical processes, but also link those process with the identified financial obligations, legal and regulatory obligations, damage to stakeholder relations, damage to reputation, and actual cost to the college in regard to the impact of a disruption. This is how we determine the criticality of a process.