Effective business continuity plans are designed to provide a rehearsed road map for the most effective restoration of essential processes and functions after a disruptive event and therefore go hand in hand with business interruption and contingent business interruption insurance.

Relative recovery priorities are assigned based on the insured’s sensitivity to the impact, measured against enterprise impact parameters. Plans are developed to temporarily operate functions in the absence of supporting technology and data, and “playbooks” are developed to restore full operational function. The recovery of IT resources is prioritized, based on the applications, servers and network resources that support the most important business processes. Standard plan components comprise a complete approach to operating through disruptions and restoring operational function with the minimum possible downtime and financial impact: