29/04/2020 NEWS, Notizie 0 comment

Anti-coronavirus for companies: ISO 22301

Pharmacologically it will take months to develop an effective Bellerophon able to defeat the monstrous Chimera we are facing nowadays, but an antidote available to organizations already exists: the Business Continuity Management System (BCMS), defined in the ISO 22301 standard. It can be considered the anti-corona virus for companies. It is able to guarantee organizations, of any size, the continuity of business processes, even in serious conditions.

The ability of an organization to continue operating during an outage has never been more important than in recent weeks. It is the process that helps companies plan the unexpected and better manage risks, which responds to a precise strategy, planning and risk minimization. It means living with deeper serenity in case of exogenous events, even for small and medium-sized companies and not only for large players.

Understanding the importance of a Business Continuity Management System is fundamental, because more and more companies are realizing how difficult it is to manage the complexity of a production chain, regardless of its complexity and extension. The standard requires working on broad goals, for this reason it can be applied by all organizations, no matter of their size or whether they operate on local, national and global markets or they are public or private.

The ISO 22301 standard “Safety and resilience – Management systems for business continuity – Requirements” provides a set of practices aimed at preparing, reacting and recovering from unforeseeable or accidental events, and at maintaining business continuity under adverse conditions, minimizing the impact of potential accidents on customers, stakeholders and on the entire corporate ecosystem.

The intent is to minimize the impact of the inauspicious event on products and services, ensuring that they can be delivered with unchanged timing and quality. In other words, guaranteeing the continuity of company processes even in the event of interruptions, system failure, loss of human and instrumental resources, which must be followed up immediately for the restoration of the activities and processes at the basis of the organization.

Due to inadequate planning and insufficient resources to deal with these events, companies may find themselves incurring on one hand an increase in costs and on the other a decrease of the trust that the stakeholders nurture for the company. Preventing interruptions and having a good plan in place to deal with the emergency is therefore essential. Based on the implementation of various best practices, the ISO 22301 standard helps to understand, develop and implement a structured BCMS, able to minimize the risks and the possibility of interrupting working processes. The certification is a testimony of quality, and demonstrates the organization’s ability to respond quickly to operational blocks, continuing to provide the requested service during accidental episodes.

Being certified against the ISO 22301standard means providing your company with a systemic approach useful for the preparation of a prevention and emergency plan and means to be ready in the event of natural disasters, market turbulence, terrorist attacks, physical interruptions of the state of security, failures to infrastructure, fraud or hacking.

ASACERT, with the technical expertise that has characterized its activity for years alongside companies of all sizes, supports organizations with the safest solution, especially in moments of great uncertainty such as those that companies are experiencing in recent weeks, to find the enthusiasm of doing business, leaving the uncertainty tunnel, working to grow with renewed confidence, aware that the coronavirus antidote for companies is already there: BUSINESS CONTINUITY MANAGEMENT – ISO 22301.