Skip to main content
Policy Authority
Category: Business Continuity

Business Continuity Strategy

Also known as: Continuity Strategy, BC Strategy
Simply put

A business continuity strategy is an organization's overall approach for keeping essential operations running and recovering them after a major disruption, such as a cyber attack, flood, or supply chain failure. It brings together the preventive measures, crisis responses, and recovery plans an organization intends to use so it can resume normal operations. It is typically developed as part of a broader business continuity management effort rather than as a standalone document.

Formal definition

Within the business continuity management (BCM) planning process, a business continuity strategy is the conceptual phase that summarizes the preventive (mitigation), crisis, and recovery approaches an organization selects to address disruptive events and to resume normal operations following an incident. It sits upstream of detailed plans: it defines the intended posture and options across mitigation, crisis, and recovery, which are then operationalized in specific documents such as a Business Continuity Plan (BCP). It should be distinguished from a BCP itself, which is the strategic framework of procedures and safeguards implementing the chosen approach; the strategy expresses the selected direction, while plans express the executable detail. Scope, prioritization, and specific measures commonly vary by organization, sector, and the disruption scenarios considered, and this entry does not address implementation specifics, tooling, or recovery time objectives.

Why it matters

Major disruptions, ranging from cyber attacks and floods to supply chain failures, can interrupt the essential operations an organization depends on. A business continuity strategy matters because it establishes, in advance, the organization's intended approach across preventive measures, crisis response, and recovery, so that decisions are made deliberately rather than improvised under pressure. Without an articulated strategy, individual plans risk being fragmented, inconsistent, or misaligned with the disruption scenarios the organization actually faces.

The strategy also serves as the connective tissue between an organization's risk posture and its executable plans. By defining the selected direction across mitigation, crisis, and recovery, it provides a reference point that detailed documents such as a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) can implement coherently. This upstream role helps ensure that prioritization and resource allocation reflect a considered view of which operations are essential and which scenarios warrant attention.

Because scope, prioritization, and specific measures commonly vary by organization, sector, and the disruption scenarios considered, the value of a continuity strategy lies in tailoring the overall approach to the organization's particular context rather than adopting a uniform template. It is important not to conflate the strategy with the plan: the strategy expresses the chosen posture and options, while plans express the executable detail.

Who it's relevant to

Risk Managers
Risk managers use a business continuity strategy to align the organization's chosen mitigation, crisis, and recovery approaches with the disruption scenarios it faces. The strategy provides a considered basis for prioritizing which essential operations to protect and how, given that scope and measures commonly vary by organization and sector.
Business Continuity and Resilience Professionals
Those responsible for the BCM planning process treat the continuity strategy as the conceptual phase that precedes detailed plans. It gives them the direction they operationalize in documents such as a BCP, helping ensure that individual plans remain coherent with the organization's overall intended posture.
Governance Bodies and Senior Management
Boards and executives concerned with directing the organization rely on the strategy to understand and endorse the overall approach to major disruption. Because the strategy sits upstream of executable detail, it supports informed decisions on prioritization and resource allocation across preventive, crisis, and recovery activities.
Compliance and Internal Audit Functions
Compliance officers and internal auditors may reference the continuity strategy to assess whether the organization's continuity plans implement a clearly defined and appropriate direction. Auditors evaluating this area should maintain the distinction between assessing the strategy and the management activity of setting it, preserving their independence from the plans they review.

Inside Business Continuity Strategy

Recovery Objectives
Statements of the targeted timeframes and acceptable data loss for resuming prioritized activities, commonly expressed as recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO). These objectives are typically derived from a business impact analysis rather than set arbitrarily.
Prioritized Activities and Dependencies
Identification of the products, services, or processes deemed most time-sensitive, together with the people, information, technology, facilities, suppliers, and other resources on which they depend. This component establishes what must be recovered and in what order.
Strategy Options
The chosen approaches for maintaining or resuming prioritized activities within recovery objectives. Options may include resilience measures, alternative sites or resources, workarounds, third-party arrangements, or accepting an interruption for lower-priority activities. Selection commonly reflects cost, feasibility, and the organization's risk appetite.
Resource Requirements
The staffing, technology, facilities, information, and supplier resources needed to execute each selected strategy option. Gaps between required and available resources may inform investment decisions.
Roles and Governance
Assignment of decision rights, responsibilities, and escalation paths for approving and enacting the strategy. This links the strategy to broader governance structures and typically sits with management rather than with independent assurance functions.
Alignment with Risk Management
The connection between the strategy and the organization's risk assessment and appetite, ensuring that chosen options address the disruption scenarios and residual risk the organization is prepared to accept.

Common questions

Answers to the questions practitioners most commonly ask about Business Continuity Strategy.

Is a business continuity strategy the same as a disaster recovery plan?
No. A business continuity strategy is the broader set of approaches an organization selects to sustain or resume prioritized activities within acceptable timeframes following a disruption. Disaster recovery is typically narrower, focusing on restoring IT systems, applications, and data. Disaster recovery commonly supports the business continuity strategy but does not constitute it; the strategy addresses people, premises, processes, suppliers, and information, not only technology. Treating the two as interchangeable understates the organizational scope of continuity planning.
Does having a business continuity strategy guarantee that the organization will keep operating through any disruption?
No. A business continuity strategy sets out how an organization intends to maintain or recover prioritized activities, but it cannot guarantee outcomes. Its effectiveness depends on the accuracy of the assumptions behind it, the resources committed, the currency of supporting plans, and how well arrangements are tested and maintained. Disruptions may exceed the scenarios anticipated, and recovery objectives represent targets rather than assured results. The strategy reduces and helps manage the impact of disruption; it does not eliminate the possibility of failure.
How does a business continuity strategy relate to the business impact analysis?
In many frameworks the business impact analysis (BIA) precedes and informs the strategy. The BIA identifies prioritized activities, their dependencies, and the timeframes within which they should be resumed. The strategy then selects the approaches, such as alternative sites, redundant capacity, manual workarounds, or third-party arrangements, needed to meet those recovery timeframes. Where recovery objectives derived from the BIA cannot be met affordably, the strategy may prompt revisiting priorities or accepting a level of residual risk.
What options are commonly considered when selecting a continuity strategy?
Commonly considered options include maintaining spare or redundant capacity, arranging alternative work locations or remote working, holding stock or agreeing standby suppliers, deferring lower-priority activities, and using manual or degraded workarounds until normal operations resume. The choice typically balances the cost of an option against the recovery timeframes and resource requirements identified for prioritized activities. Selection often varies by activity, so a single organization may adopt different strategies for different functions.
Who is typically responsible for approving and owning the continuity strategy?
Responsibility varies by organization, but strategic direction and approval commonly rest with senior management or an accountable executive, given the resource commitments and risk acceptance decisions involved. Operational development and maintenance are frequently assigned to a continuity coordinator or function, while activity owners typically retain responsibility for the arrangements relevant to their areas. Where a three lines perspective applies, management owns and operates the strategy, while assurance functions may independently review its adequacy rather than design it.
How often should a business continuity strategy be reviewed and tested?
Review and testing frequency depends on the organization's risk profile, regulatory context, and the pace of change in its activities, dependencies, and threat environment. Many organizations review the strategy periodically and also following significant changes, such as new systems, restructuring, or lessons from actual incidents or exercises. Testing commonly ranges from discussion-based exercises to more comprehensive simulations. The appropriate cadence and depth vary by sector and jurisdiction, and this entry does not prescribe specific intervals.

Common misconceptions

A business continuity strategy is the same as a business continuity plan.
The strategy sets the high-level approach for how prioritized activities will be maintained or recovered within agreed objectives, whereas the plan documents the specific procedures, contacts, and actions to execute that approach. The strategy typically informs and precedes plan development.
A business continuity strategy is primarily an IT concern focused on disaster recovery.
IT disaster recovery is one component that addresses technology restoration, but a business continuity strategy spans people, facilities, suppliers, information, and processes across the organization. Treating it as solely an IT exercise can leave non-technology dependencies unaddressed.
Once a strategy is approved, it remains valid indefinitely.
Priorities, dependencies, resources, and the risk environment change over time. A strategy is commonly reviewed and updated periodically and after significant organizational or environmental change so that recovery objectives and selected options remain realistic.

Best practices

Base strategy selection on the outputs of a business impact analysis and risk assessment so that recovery objectives and priorities reflect actual dependencies rather than assumptions.
Evaluate multiple strategy options against cost, feasibility, and the organization's stated risk appetite before committing to a chosen approach.
Explicitly identify resource requirements for each option and address any gaps between required and available resources through documented investment or contingency decisions.
Define clear roles, decision rights, and escalation paths, keeping management ownership of the strategy distinct from any independent assurance review of it.
Review and update the strategy on a periodic basis and following significant changes to activities, dependencies, suppliers, or the risk environment.
Confirm that recovery objectives set in the strategy are achievable by testing or exercising the associated plans, and feed lessons learned back into the strategy.
Promotional banner highlighting failures found in PCI audits and how to spot the gaps