What are the key metrics and indicators to monitor and evaluate your business continuity performance?

When evaluating KPIs, it is important to ensure that they are aligned with objectives, relevant, measurable, accurate, and actionable. KPIs should measure critical success factors that will determine whether BCP objectives are achieved. Data used to calculate KPIs should be consistent, verifiable, and methods for calculating them should be transparent. The KPIs should provide actionable data to enable informed decision making for improving the BCP plan.

Also important to understand the context of the business, external influences or fundamental changes in the business sector. Many businesses have failed in this area, photography, music and video provision, versus streaming. Focussing on addressing internal resilience, does not address a fundamental shift due to technological changes.

It's crucial to conduct BIA & define MTD, RTO & RPO for all the critical business processes according to business goals. Evaluate expected vs actual values as performance. Evaluate Incident response time. Monitoring system uptime and availability ensures that key assets remain accessible and secure, directly impacting both productivity and client trust. Regular testing and exercise success rates provide a clear view of our response readiness, revealing areas where our continuity plans can be improved for stronger defense against emerging threats. Tracking data backup and restore success rates ensures data protection and quick recovery in case of a cyber incident. Speed of communication with stakeholders is also critical point to evaluate.

When evaluating KRIs, it is important to ensure that they are relevant, timely, reliable, actionable, and integrated with the organization's overall risk management framework. KRIs should measure key indicators that identify potential risks and prioritize actions to mitigate their impact. The data used to calculate the KRIs should be accurate, consistent, and verifiable. KRIs should provide real-time or near-real-time data to enable the organization to respond quickly to emerging threats and take proactive measures to mitigate their impact.

Self Assessment is a good starting point - and the start may be as simple as that we have initiated the program (millions of companies have still not - so we are better than them! Moving on keep checking whether you are doing what you said you would. Its a story of 'planned vs actuals/ achieved' - meetings, BIAs, RAs, Plans, Tests, Audits, Reviews, Improvements, Policy, Trainings (number of trainings as well as number of people covered), Client Satisfaction, Employee Satisfaction etc. There is one parameter that you wont plan, but will still monitor and track i.e. number of incidents/ BC Invocations, and % managed well/ successfully.

When evaluating Key Performance Drivers (KPDs), it is important to ensure that they are aligned with objectives, measurable, actionable, prioritized based on impact, and subject to continual improvement. The KPDs should focus on critical factors that drive the organization's ability to achieve its BCP goals. The data provided by KPDs should enable informed decisions about the BCP plan, and the KPDs should be reviewed and updated regularly to ensure their relevance.