Business Continuity Planning ServicesStrategy, BIA, and BCP · Aligned to ISO 22301 and NIST SP 800-34

A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is the business-wide playbook for keeping operations running during a disruption. It covers people, processes, facilities, vendors, and communications. A Disaster Recovery (DR) plan is the technical subset that focuses on restoring IT systems and data. The DR runbooks are an appendix inside the larger BCP. The BCP answers “how does the business keep functioning?” while the DR plan answers “how do we get the systems back?” A complete program needs both, and the technology to back them lives on our Managed Backup & Disaster Recovery page.

In most cases, yes. The BIA is what produces defensible RTO and RPO numbers, and those numbers determine which backup architecture, retention strategy, and recovery tooling actually fit. Buying the technology first usually means either over-spending on a recovery target the business does not need, or under-spending on a system the business cannot survive without. ISO 22301 Clause 8.2.2 and the FFIEC BCM Handbook both require the BIA as the basis for strategy, and most cyber insurers now ask for it during renewal underwriting.

It depends on the process. A customer-facing transaction system might justify a one-hour RTO and a fifteen-minute RPO. An internal HR system might be fine at a 24-hour RTO and a 24-hour RPO. The cost of recovery technology rises sharply as the targets tighten, so the right answer is per-process, not per-business. The BIA is what produces the defensible answer; we typically run it in 8 to 12 weeks for a mid-market business of 200 to 500 employees.

A focused BIA + Strategy Sprint runs 4 to 6 weeks. A Full BCP Build with DR runbooks and the first tabletop typically lands in 10 to 14 weeks. Ongoing programs operate on quarterly cadences after that. The pace is set by stakeholder availability for interviews and workshops, not by drafting time, so businesses with strong executive sponsorship usually finish at the faster end of the range.

Almost certainly not. A BCP authored before 2020 was written for a different threat landscape (pre-ransomware-as-a-service), a different workforce model (mostly on-site), and a different regulatory environment (pre-CMMC 2.0, pre-NIST CSF 2.0, pre-FFIEC 2019 booklet revision). We typically recommend a refresh BIA plus a partial rewrite, sized to a Tier 1 or Tier 2 engagement depending on how much of the original document still maps to current operations.

A tabletop exercise is a facilitated, scenario-driven walk-through of the BCP with the people who would actually execute it. Done well, it surfaces gaps a paper review never finds: role ambiguity, decision-authority confusion, missing escalation paths, broken vendor contacts. NIST SP 800-84 is the standard reference. Annual is the minimum for most businesses; quarterly is appropriate for regulated industries (healthcare, finance, defense industrial base) and any organization with a board-level continuity mandate.

HIPAA’s Security Rule requires a Contingency Plan under 45 CFR §164.308(a)(7), which has five required components: Data Backup Plan, Disaster Recovery Plan, Emergency Mode Operation Plan, Testing and Revision Procedures, and Applications and Data Criticality Analysis. The last one is effectively a BIA. Our BCP deliverable is mapped to satisfy each of these. For broader healthcare cybersecurity context, see our Managed Cybersecurity Services page.

ISO 22301 is the international Business Continuity Management System standard. It is broad, organization-wide, and certifiable, covering people, processes, and facilities. NIST SP 800-34 Rev. 1 is the U.S. federal Contingency Planning Guide, narrower in scope and focused on IT systems. Most of our engagements use ISO 22301 as the structural template for the overall BCP and NIST SP 800-34 templates for the DR runbooks and IT contingency procedures inside it. The two complement each other; we rarely use one without the other.

Yes. We map the engagement deliverables to the FFIEC IT Examination Handbook Business Continuity Management booklet, which is the document examiners use during reviews. That covers governance and senior-management responsibilities, the BIA, risk assessment, business continuity strategies, resilience, data backup and replication, third-party service provider management, and the testing program. The Tier 3 ongoing program is the typical engagement model for financial-services clients because of the recurring exam cadence.

Both. The BIA + Strategy Sprint and Full BCP Build engagements are project-based with a defined finish line and a handoff. The Ongoing BCDR Program is a quarterly retainer that maintains the plan, runs the tabletop cadence, refreshes the BIA annually, and stays on call as the activation partner during a declared event. Many clients start with a project tier and convert to the ongoing program after the first plan is in place.

Yes. The strategy work (BIA, BCP authoring, DR runbook design, tabletop facilitation) is delivered remotely via Teams or Zoom and is available to businesses across the United States. We have deepest engineering capacity in Northern NJ, the NYC metro, Pennsylvania, and South Florida, which becomes an advantage if you need on-site recovery activation support during a declared event in those regions. For purely remote consulting engagements, location is not a constraint.

Pricing is contact-gated because the variables move every quote: number of critical processes, regulatory regime, number of physical locations, system complexity, urgency, and whether OST is also delivering the technology underneath. The Tier 1 BIA + Strategy Sprint is the typical entry point and the smallest commitment; the Tier 3 retainer is the long-term engagement model. Talk to us through the form on this page and we will scope a proposal within one to two business days, typically.