Business Continuity Planner
A guided readiness assessment for whether your organization has a genuine, tested business continuity plan — covering plan currency, recovery roles, vendor dependencies, and communication planning across seven operational areas.
Free to use · no account required
Continuity Readiness Assessment
Work through each section at your own pace. All questions include operational context and specific next steps. Results are shown immediately — no email required.
Continuity Assessment
Business Continuity Planning Readiness
A guided review of your organization's continuity plan — whether it exists, is current, has been tested, and assigns clear recovery responsibility. Work through each section at your own pace; results are shown immediately.
How It Works
What this tool does with your input
How this tool works, and what happens to what you enter
- You
You set the constraints
Your objectives, obligations and existing estate, in your own terms.
- The tool
The plan assembles in your browser
Your constraints are mapped onto a structure locally.
- You
You get a document to work from
A structure you can copy, print or hand to someone else.
What To Look For
Six Indicators of Continuity Readiness
A continuity plan's existence says little about its readiness. These are the most common gaps found in continuity plan reviews.
Plans That Exist Only in Memory
A continuity plan that lives in one manager's head — not in writing — fails the moment that person is unavailable, which is common during the exact regional or personal emergencies continuity plans exist to address.
Never-Tested Recovery Objectives
Documented RTOs that have never been validated through a tabletop exercise or partial recovery test are assumptions, not commitments. Testing is what turns a plan into a capability.
Stale Role Assignments
Plans that still name employees who have left the organization, with no succession process, are a routinely discovered gap that undermines confidence in the entire document.
Undocumented Vendor Dependencies
Critical operational capabilities served by a single vendor with no documented alternative or workaround create exposure that surfaces only during an actual vendor disruption.
No Out-of-Band Communication Plan
If a disruption affects email or phone systems, the organization needs an alternative communication channel already established — not improvised during the event itself.
No Named Plan Owner
Ownership diffused across "leadership" or "IT" in general reliably results in no one actually maintaining the plan between events. A single named owner keeps it alive.
What This Assessment Covers
Seven Areas of Continuity Governance
Each section addresses a distinct dimension of business continuity readiness — from plan currency to communication planning.
Plan Existence & Currency
Whether a written plan exists, is current, and is accessible independent of the systems it describes recovering from.
Testing & Tabletop Exercises
Whether the plan has been exercised, gaps were tracked to remediation, and testing runs on a recurring cadence.
Recovery Roles & Staff Awareness
Whether recovery responsibilities are assigned to named individuals who have actually reviewed the plan.
Vendor & Dependency Mapping
Whether critical vendor dependencies are documented, single-vendor risk is assessed, and contacts are current.
Recovery Time Objectives
Whether RTOs are documented at the business-function level, validated through testing, and aligned with actual backup capability.
Communication Plan
Whether internal and external communication procedures exist for a disruption, including regulatory notification obligations.
Plan Ownership & Review Cadence
Whether a named owner and a scheduled review cycle keep the plan current over time.
Why Continuity Planning Matters
A Plan That Has Never Been Tested Is a Document, Not a Capability
Continuity planning is an ongoing operating discipline, not a one-time deliverable that gets filed and forgotten.
Untested Plans Fail Silently
A continuity plan that has never been walked through a tabletop exercise looks complete on paper while hiding gaps in access, procedure, and communication that only surface during an actual disruption — the worst possible time to discover them.
People Change Faster Than Plans
Recovery role assignments referencing employees who have since left the organization are one of the most common findings in continuity reviews. Succession needs to be built into offboarding, not treated as a separate exercise.
Vendor Dependencies Are Often Invisible
Modern organizations depend on cloud platforms, ISPs, and line-of-business vendors for core operations. Without a documented dependency map, a single vendor outage forces real-time discovery of what else depends on it.
Recovery Time Objectives Must Be Grounded in Reality
An RTO that the underlying infrastructure cannot realistically meet creates a false commitment to leadership and, in regulated industries, an audit gap. Testing is what connects the stated objective to actual capability.
FAQ
Common Questions
How is this different from the Backup & Operational Continuity Assessment?
The backup assessment evaluates technical backup coverage and recoverability — whether your data can actually be restored. This tool evaluates the organizational layer around that: whether a written continuity plan exists, whether recovery roles are assigned to real people who know their responsibilities, whether the plan has been tested, and whether vendor dependencies are mapped. Most organizations need both.
Does this tool generate a continuity plan for me?
No. This is a readiness assessment, not a document generator. It evaluates the maturity of your existing continuity planning and highlights specific gaps with recommended next steps — the plan itself still needs to reflect your organization's actual systems, personnel, and vendor relationships.
What is a tabletop exercise?
A structured walkthrough where recovery-responsible staff talk through their response to a simulated disruption scenario — without the cost or disruption of a full-scale test. It is the single most effective, lowest-cost way to validate a continuity plan and is frequently skipped entirely.
Do small organizations really need a formal continuity plan?
Smaller organizations often have less redundancy than larger ones — a single vendor outage or a single key employee's unavailability can have an outsized impact. Formality can scale to organization size, but an undocumented plan that exists only in one person's memory is a real operational risk regardless of headcount.
How often should a continuity plan be reviewed and tested?
At minimum annually for both review and testing, and immediately after any material change to infrastructure, key personnel, or critical vendor relationships. Plans left unreviewed for multiple years typically reference systems, people, and vendors that no longer apply.
What happens if our plan lists an employee who has since left the company?
This is one of the most common findings in continuity plan reviews. Recovery role assignments need to be updated to current personnel whenever staff changes occur, and successors need to be briefed on their responsibilities — not simply added to the document.
Is business continuity planning required for compliance frameworks like HIPAA or SOC 2?
Both HIPAA and SOC 2 generally expect documented and tested continuity and availability procedures as part of their broader risk management requirements. A plan that has never been tested or reviewed is a common audit finding.
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Real-world continuity assessment engagement and outcome for a professional services organization.
Operational Support
Need help building or validating a continuity plan?
IT KORR can develop or revise your business continuity plan, run tabletop exercises with your team, map vendor dependencies, and validate recovery objectives against tested capability.
No commitment required — we respond within one business day.