ISO 22301 is an international standard for Business Continuity Management System which is design to protect, prepare for, respond to, reduce the likelihood of occurrence and recover from disruptive incidents when they arise. With the help of this standard, your organization is prepared to detect and prevent threats. Moreover, it assures you that your organization will continue to operate without any major impacts and losses.

Why is this standard important for you?

If you are certified with ISO 22301 standard, it will give you the power of providing a premium level of services to your shareholders. Moreover, it secures the data backups, and also tries to minimize the major losses and maximize the recovery time of critical functions. With ISO 22301, you will enhance your knowledge and skills and you will be able to advise your organization on best practices in the management of business continuity. Moreover, this standard will help you in improving your ability to analyze and make decisions in the context of business continuity management.

Reasons why ISO 22301 is a necessity

The reasons are listed below:

• Assurance of Continued Service
• Protecting Reputation and Brand
• Reducing the risk of Business Interruption
• Greater Resilience against Disruption
• Quicker recovery from Interruption
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What will happen if you do not have a Business Continuity Plan?

• 50 per cent of businesses without this plan fail following a major disruption.
• 40 per cent of businesses never reopen following a disaster.
• 25 per cent of remaining businesses close within two years.

How to get started with ISO 22301 training?

You will start this process by choosing the right certification body that will offer you the finest qualitative training of this standard. Your first have to complete a quote request form so that the certification giving authority knows your company and your requirements. You can perform this step either through an online quick quote or through the online formal quote request form.  This information of yours will be used for certification.

Once your proposal is agreed upon, the authority will contact you to book your assessment with the authority’s Assessor. This will include an Initial Certification Audit of your company. To make sure it goes well, you have to ensure that your management system has been fully functional for a minimum of three months.

Following a successful two-stage audit, a certification decision is made and if positive, then certification to the required standard is issued by the authority. You will get both a hard and soft copy of the certification and it is valid for three years. This certification is also maintained through annual surveillance audits and a three yearly recertification audit.

Why it is needed?

The organizations at one point face disruptions and this may include technology failure, flooding, utility disruption, fire or terrorist attack. The standard, irrespective of the size of the organization, helps in managing the overall business risks and provides a plan to respond and manage such incidents.

The consequences of unexpected business disruptions may be far-reaching and might involve loss of life, loss of assets or income, or the inability to deliver products and services on which the organization's survival might depend.

Through this standard, you will be able to identify those products and services that are crucial for the organization’s existence. This will also help in arranging and finding out the right responses to such disruptions.

Benefits of ISO 22301

Some of the common benefits of this standard are as follow:

• It will help to expand your knowledge to meet your business objectives.
• It will strengthen your reputation management.
• The standard will improve the recovery time and customer reliability of your organization.
• It will help you to achieve international recognition.