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Management Systems

ISO 22301

The international standard for Business Continuity Management Systems (BCMS), defining how organisations plan, test, and maintain recovery capability for disruptive incidents.

Full Definition

ISO 22301:2019 specifies requirements for planning, establishing, implementing, operating, monitoring, reviewing, and continually improving a documented Business Continuity Management System. It provides the framework for identifying disruption risks, maintaining continuity plans, and testing recovery capability against agreed targets.

For datacentre operators and their enterprise customers, ISO 22301 certification demonstrates a structured approach covering: business impact analysis (BIA), risk assessment, continuity strategies, and exercising and testing (tabletop, functional, and full-scale). It directly complements ISO 27001 — together they address information security and operational continuity.

ISO 22301 aligns with the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) commitments found in SLAs, providing the management framework behind those contractual commitments. It is increasingly required alongside ISO 27001 in public sector and financial services procurement.

Also Known As

ISO 22301:2019BCMS certificationbusiness continuity standard

Source Reference

ISO 22301:2019 — Security and Resilience: Business Continuity Management Systems

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