Changes to Business Continuity ISO 22301

The 2019 revision of ISO 22301 improves accessibility for businesses, making it easier for the Standard to be utilised to improve organisational resilience.

ISO 22301 – Business Continuity Management Systems – Requirements, brings together international best practice to help organisations respond to, and recover from, disruptions effectively.

The Standard has been a powerful tool for building resilience and supporting business continuity since its inception in 2012, and these – their first amends – will mean more businesses can benefit from them, regardless of where they are on their business continuity planning journey.

Key changes

Beside a number of minor adjustments, there are three changes you should be aware of:

• The structure of the Standard has been reviewed and greater clarification has been added.

This has made the Standard easier to read and implement with less repetition in content.

• The language and terminology have been simplified.

The Standard now better reflects today’s thinking in the business continuity industry, particularly in relation to business impact analysis and the development of recovery strategies.

• The structure has been streamlined to remain in line with all other ISO management system standards.

The improved readability makes it much easier to implement business continuity, particularly for those new to the subject.

Furthermore, the structural changes make it simpler for organisations to build business continuity into any existing management systems, such as quality management or information security.

How changes benefit your business

With a better understanding of your business through the analysis of disruption risks and areas of vulnerability, companies can reassure their stakeholders – including clients, suppliers, and regulators – that they have sound systems and processes in place for business continuity.

Having better business continuity processes mean reduced costs and less impact on business performance should something go wrong.

To find out what these updates mean for your business, and how to implement these changes as part of your wider risk management programme, please contact your local Marsh representative.