Risk & Business Magazine Knight Archer Insurance Spring 2016 | Page 26

Business Continuity And the Risk of Disruption BY: CHALEN SCHNEIDER, KNIGHT ARCHER COMMERCIAL INSURANCE [email protected] T he disruption of normal operations is something every business would do better to avoid. Disruption leads to a myriad of issues, including lost revenue, potential risk exposure and the loss of customers. The aversion of disruption, in fact, is where the term “business continuity” originated. Business continuity falls under the auspices of risk management, and is defined by ISO 22301:2012 (the standard guiding business continuity) as the “capability of an organization to continue delivery of products or services at acceptable predefined levels following a disruptive incident”. In layman’s terms, business continuity is the practice of making sure a business can continue to function in the event of a disaster or other adverse incident. The Risk of Disruption Problems occurring are just a part of life. Even so, it is important to make sure that you are covered in case something occurs in your business. If you run your entire company off of a single server, and that server was to go down, you would be at a significant risk of loss. Disruptions like this can occur from the top to the bottom of an organization, and it is important to recognize both where they are and how to deal with them. Look for bottlenecks. If every order you give has to go through a single manager, for instance, what happens if that manager becomes ill for an extended period? W