Business Continuity Manager

The Business Continuity Manager is responsible for ensuring that there are plans in place for an organization to continue to function in the event of a disaster or catastrophic event. 

The Business Continuity Manager leads key stakeholders through the process of identifying IT risk and vulnerabilities, anything ranging from natural and environmental risks through to technological failures and security breaches, and putting in place the plan to deal with these.

The aim of the business continuity plan is to ensure that the business can continue to provide basic services till a ‘business as usual’ state can be recommenced. The Business Continuity Manager will need to work closely with the IT Security Manager and IT Architects to develop recovery plans for continuation of critical business systems and processes.

Critically the plan needs to be workable, and the business continuity manager will coordinate testing of the plan, and is also responsible for keeping it up-to-date as changes take place and as new risks emerge in the business. 

Typical Tasks

  • Scenario planning and risk assessment
  • Prioritize the businesses to be recovered
  • Document the business continuity plan
  • Coordinate testing of the recovery strategy, plans and procedures
  • Make sure all IT staff with responsibilities for fighting disasters are aware of their responsibilities
  • Develop status reports on actions being taken to reduce vulnerability.

Potential Next Steps 

Chief Information Security Officer, Chief Information Officer.

How to get there

AXELOS professional certifications are recognized worldwide by employers as an indicator of your skills and commitment as an ITSM professional. 

The following certifications are aimed at practicing Business Continuity Manager and will support your development into more senior ITSM roles:

Service Design / Service Offerings and Agreements / Planning, Protection and Optimization

  • Maintain an accurate service catalogue
  • Improve service provider focus on customer outcomes
  • Develop specific and measurable targets for IT services
  • Monitor and improve customer satisfaction with the quality of service delivered
  • Manage customer and IT expectations for services delivered
  • Negotiate and agree service level requirements and targets
  • Understand current and future needs of the business for availability
  • Ensure that service performance achievements meet all of their agreed targets
  • Monitor and understand the patterns of business activity
  • Reduce risks to IT services to agreed acceptable levels.

Learn More About Service Design

Learn More About Service Offerings and Agreements 

Learn More About Planning, Protection and Optimization

Continual Service Improvement

  • Identify opportunities for improving services, processes and tools
  • Reduce the cost of providing services
  • Ensure that IT services enable the required business outcomes
  • Identify what needs to be measured, analyzed and reported for improvement.

Learn More About Continual Service Improvement

ITIL Practitioner

  • Apply the nine ITSM guiding principles in a real world context
  • Apply the Continual Service Improvement (CSI) approach as a way to structure improvement initiatives
  • Enhance continual service improvement activity through:
    • Organisational Change Management
    • Improved communication
    • Better use of Measurement and Metrics

Learn More About ITIL Practitioner

RESILIA™ Foundation

  • Introduction to cyber resilience.
  • How decisions impact good/bad cyber resilience.

Learn More About RESILIA™ Foundation

RESILIA™ Practitioner

  • What does effective cyber resilience look like?
  • What are the risks and issues that can easily hit cyber resilience?
  • How to get the best balance of risk, cost, benefits and flexibility within an organization.

Learn More About RESILIA™ Practitioner