A business continuity audit tests a company’s plan to stay operational during internal or external threats. The audit challenges the plan’s lifecycle, practicality, and effectiveness. External auditors can provide an objective opinion and industry-specific experience. The audit includes a meeting to decide the scope and expectations, fieldwork to conduct interviews and monitor operations, and a final review to determine the plan’s strength.
A business continuity audit questions and tests the plan a company has in place to stay operational during internal or external threats. Businesses can face a multitude of threats that disrupt the organization’s ability to complete tasks and activities. While continuity plans may not be very useful in a business, business owners and executives may need to know how well the plan will work. The business continuity audit will conduct a series of tests and reviews to determine the strength of the continuity plan and how well the company insulates itself from disruption to operations.
Continuity plans typically have a lifecycle that requires analysis, solution design, implementation guidelines, acceptance testing, and maintenance to keep the plan on track. In many companies, continuity plans are written long before the threats that actually cause problems for an organization. While the plan may include a number of well thought out ideas, the practicality of using the plan may be entirely different. The business continuity audit will challenge these phases of the continuity plan and possibly lead to suggestions that will strengthen the plan and make it easier to implement when needed.
Conducting a business continuity audit will begin with the people involved in the testing and review process. A public accounting firm or other professional auditors can provide an objective opinion on the business continuity plan. Additionally, they may have industry-specific experience that internal auditors do not. While external auditors can be more expensive, the benefits of compensation can result in a more productive audit.
The business continuity audit should begin with a meeting between the auditors and the owners or managers of the company. This meeting will decide the scope of the audit and what expectations the company’s management has in terms of the audit results. From the meeting will come a timetable requiring auditors to issue a report by a certain date, which saves the company money and also ensures that the changes are in place before too much time passes, during which a threat can disrupt the activity.
Field work is the main thrust of the business continuity audit. Reviewers will conduct interviews with the people who developed the continuity plan and learn about the design and implementation process. A walkthrough helps auditors understand how the company will allocate resources to repel threats to the company. You also need to monitor employees as they perform their duties and learn how line managers conduct operations. A final review of the company’s internal and external operations allows auditors to complete the fieldwork and discover how well the business continuity plan would hold up in the face of single or multiple threats.
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