Business Continuity ISO22301 Auditor/ Lead Auditor

Course details

This course is conducted via SGS Singapore. All instruction and examinations are in English.

Contingency planning and disaster recovery were largely information technology-led responses to natural disasters and terrorism that affected businesses during the 1980s and early 1990s.

There was a growing recognition, however, that this needed to become a business-led process and encompass preparing for many forms of disruption. In light of this, the discipline became known as business continuity management (BCM).

As governments and regulators began to recognize the role of business continuity in mitigating the effects of disruptive incidents on society, they increasingly sought to gain assurance that key players had appropriate business continuity arrangements in place. Similarly, businesses recognized their dependence on each other and sought assurance that key suppliers and partners would continue to provide key products and services, even when incidents occurred.

ISO 22301 is a management systems standard for BCM which can be used by organizations of all sizes and types. These organizations will be able to obtain accredited certification against this standard and so demonstrate to legislators, regulators, customers, prospective customers and other interested parties that they are adhering to good practice in BCM. ISO 22301 also enables the business continuity manager to show top management that a recognized standard has been achieved.

While ISO 22301 may be used for certification and therefore includes rather short and concise requirements describing the central elements of BCM, a more extensive guidance standard (ISO 22313) is being developed to provide greater detail on each requirement in ISO 22301.

ISO 22301 may also be used within an organization to measure itself against good practice, and by auditors wishing to report to management. The influence of the standard will therefore be much greater than those who simply choose to be certified against the standard.

The standard is pided into 10 main clauses, starting with scope, normative references, and terms and definitions.

THE BENEFITS ARE:
ISO 22301 emphasizes the need for a well-defined incident response structure. This ensures that when incidents occur, responses are escalated in a timely manner and people are empowered to take the necessary actions to be effective. Life safety is emphasized and a particular point is made that the organization must communicate with external parties who may be affected, for instance if an incident poses a noxious or explosive risk to surrounding public areas.

The requirements for business continuity plans are laid out in Clause 8, too. Quickly understood, user-focused documents are more suitable than the large, unwieldy documents suited to auditors. Smaller plans are therefore more likely to be needed than one large plan. Updated on 17 September, 2018