Smith, R. (1995), “Business Continuity planning and service level agreements,” Information Management – Computer Security, Vol. doi.org/10.1108/09685229510092048 Check your own BC/DR plan or provider, first determine if it takes due account of the circumstances of the pandemic. Your garden variety plan may not be suitable for a pandemic. Most BC/DR plans respond to data transmission failures, natural disasters or terrorist events. Pandemics differ in both the magnitude and duration of these events. There is no doubt that COVID-19 imposes changes and adaptability within organizations. As we continue to face this new reality, some organizations must not only look internally at their Business Continuity Plans (PCO) as they are being tested, but also need to consider specific provisions in third-party agreements that contain BCP policy provisions, such as disaster recovery plans. Ultimately, PCO should indicate how a business will continue to operate, regardless of disruptions caused by critical system failures, virus attacks, natural disasters or loss of access to the organization`s core infrastructure or supply chain impact. A PCO is a strategy, tactics and scenario plan that involves dealing with an event or crisis like the one we have today. Because of the downstream effect of COVID-19 around the world, the parties must review their third-party agreements to justify debt relief from the benefit, performance reduction or convincing performance. As a precautionary measure, the parties should leave and carefully consider these agreements with legal advisors, as there is often an interaction between the rules of thought and an unlikely clear path to a desired outcome.

This is especially true when an organization has specifically negotiated a disaster recovery provision in the agreement. These disaster recovery plans are part of an organization`s PCO. The goal of the emergency recovery plan is to have a process that allows a company to recover enough data and system functions to allow the organization to continue its operations. Because some IT infrastructure is outsourced to suppliers, a disaster recovery plan is essential in agreements with these vendors. Business continuity planning is like any other service that is provided and justifies as such a service level contract. Promotes the idea of a master service contract as a roof document for the implementation and maintenance of service level agreements. Business Continuity plan (BC/DR) is an essential part of your business and supplier – an increasingly obvious fact, as we now face the uncertainty created by COVID-19. Your agreements with suppliers and service providers are likely responsible for the circumstances of force majeure and the bc/DR provisions, and the review and updating of these contingencies is now essential. The following steps will help you critically check how the BC/DR plans support your COVID-19 chart. Once you have found that the BC/DR plan is appropriate in terms of scope and scale, you should also consider the following: If your supplier`s/provider`s BC/DR plan is defective, use the mechanism in your agreement to request updates or complements to your plan. In addition to correcting deficiencies in relation to the above items, you should also ask what is specific to viruses or pandemics: your company may have the best business continuity plans in the world, but at the end of the day, if a critical supplier suffers a major malfunction that affects your products or services, it will be your organization that will take care of the heat.