Business Continuity Practitioner

Course Overview

The S-BCP certification program covers all the theoretical and practical aspects of Business Continuity Management that you as an aspiring BCM specialist will need to master to embed business continuity in your organisation. The certificate demonstrates your thorough knowledge of Business Continuity Management theory, your capability to translate theory to your own organisation, and your enhanced ability to apply the acquired knowledge to solve practical problems related to business continuity.

Target Audience

This course is aimed at those who will be involved in Business Continuity Management or need to improve business continuity-related skills, such as:

• Business continuity managers/ officers
• Facility managers
• Security managers

Finally, this certificate is intended to be an important career milestone for business continuity professionals, as it constitutes the second level of a complete and extensive Certified Business Continuity Management Officer certification track. Achieving the Business Continuity Practitioner certificate provides students with a solid knowledge to be able to continue with the Business Continuity Management Expert certificate, and advance their career to become a BCMO. Students who already possess intermediate-level business continuity knowledge can decide to start their training with the Expert level of the certification track.

Course Objectives

The Business Continuity Practitioner certification exam tests your real-world business continuity management skills.

By passing the BCP certification exam and earning a SECO-Business Continuity Practitioner (S-BCP) certificate, you demonstrate your ability to

• Perform threat and vulnerability analyses to identify threats to your organisation;
• Perform business impact analyses to identify critical business functions, processes and resources;
• Prioritise threats and identify appropriate continuity measures;
• Establish maximum tolerable downtime (MTPD) and recovery time objective (RTO) for your processes;
• Draft and implement a business continuity plan;
• Determine key performance indicators for your business continuity plan;
• Draw up and implement an emergency response plan in line with the applicable legal and regulatory requirements;
• Understand the fundamental principles of crisis management planning and internal and external crisis communications;
• Identify roles, responsibilities, competencies and key performance indicators for the internal crisis organisation;
• Identify recovery activities and priorities, and draw up a continuity of operations plan to ensure the availability of critical personnel and resources;

 

Identify business continuity training and exercise needs, draft and plan BCM exercises, and determine key performance indicators for BCM testing.

Course Content

Module 1: Threats and Vulnerability Analysis (BKA)

• The usefulness, necessity and purpose of a BKA
• Preparing a BKA and BKA reports
• How does your organization view threats and vulnerabilities in general?
• The difference between a quantitative and qualitative assessment of threats and vulnerabilities
• How can threats and vulnerabilities be made manageable?

 

Module 2: Business impact analysis (BIA)

• The usefulness, necessity and purpose of a BIA
• Existing methods for performing a BIA and drawing up a subsequent damage assessment
• Maximum Tolerable Period of Disruption (MTPD), Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
• The types of consequential damage and determining a consequential damage picture
• Which disciplines are required for the implementation of a BIA?
• Preparing BIA reports

 

Module 3: Introduction to Business Continuity Plan (BCP)

• What is Crisis Management?
• The characteristics of a crisis
• The difference between an incident and a crisis
• What is the use and necessity of crisis communication?
• The difference between image and reputation
• Drawing up a crisis management plan
• The composition of the crisis organization
• The role of social media in times of crisis
• Drawing up a Crisis Stakeholdermap
• The role of BHV in crisis management

 

Module 4: Emergency Response Plan (ER)

• From company self-protection to company emergency response (BHV)
• History and exploration of first aid for incidents
• What requirements are set for the emergency response team?
• Setting up an emergency response organization
• Emergency Response from the Government

 

Module 5: Crisis Management Plan (CMP)Module 6: Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP)

• What is a COOP and what is it for?
• The student can name the plans within the COOP
• The formulation and basic requirements of a recovery plan
• The different types of recovery strategies and associated quality features
• The importance of backup and recovery of digital and non-digital data; the need for external storage
• The translation of a process into underlying information systems and the implementation of remedial measures
• The importance and composition of a recovery organization

Course Prerequisites

SECO-Business Continuity Foundation (S-BCF) certificate or equivalent is recommended.