Business continuity and risk management are crucial for managing business operations. Business recovery professionals focus on disaster planning and ensuring operations continue after a catastrophe, while risk management professionals purchase insurance, minimize legal liabilities, and handle workers’ compensation. In some organizations, both disciplines are part of the same department. Coordination between the two is essential, and enterprise risk management oversees all risks across an organization.
Business continuity and risk management are two of the most important disciplines in managing business operations. Business continuity professionals are responsible for disaster planning and ensuring that operations continue after a catastrophe. Risk management professionals are also responsible for preparing for disasters, but they also have many other duties such as purchasing insurance, minimizing contracts and legal liabilities, and workers’ compensation. The subjects are very similar. In some organizations, business continuity and risk management are part of the same department.
In general, business continuity focuses on the many different catastrophes that can disrupt an organization’s operations. After listing these threats to business operations, business recovery professionals detail disaster recovery plans should any of these catastrophes strike. The goal is to continue running the business during the disaster or restart business operations as soon as possible after the disaster.
Business recovery specialists are not just responsible for one facility as large entities can have facilities across the country or even the world. This means that these specialists have to worry about ongoing operations in more than one location. They must be concerned with disaster recovery across multiple sites. When an organization also has a chain of suppliers and partners around the world, top-notch business recovery specialists are concerned with business recovery for every link in the chain.
Risk management professionals are often responsible for the same business recovery tasks. This is often the case where disaster recovery specialists are part of an organization’s risk management department. Other professionals in the department handle personal safety and workers’ compensation, purchasing property and casualty insurance, emergency response, and employee benefits. In smaller entities, the risk management department may have only one member. This professional would be responsible for all these business continuity and risk management tasks.
Larger national and international organizations may be sizable enough, however, to have separate departments for business continuity and risk management. Depending on the company’s business operations, business continuity specialists, such as the IT business recovery team, may be located in each individual department. Coordination between business continuity and risk management is still essential. Enterprise risk management is the practice of overseeing and managing all risks across an organization, regardless of size. Business continuity and risk management can be the responsibility of enterprise risk management.
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