Crisis: A crisis is considered a major problem. It is of sufficient impact that it adversely affects the organization’s ability to continue business functions.
Major: A major incident is of sufficient strength to negatively impact one or more departments, or might even affect external clients.
Minor: Although these events are noticeable, they cause little or no damage.
Negligible: These detectable events cause no damage or have no longer-term effect.

Direct Access Storage Device: A general term for magnetic disk storage devices, which historically have been used in mainframe and minicomputer (mid-range computer) environments. Every point on Direct Access Storage Device may be promptly reached. A redundant array of independent disks (RAID) is a type of DASD.

Sequential Access Storage Device: Every point must be traversed in order to reach the desired position. Tape drives are Sequential Access Storage Devices.

. Incident response team—Team developed as a central clearinghouse for all incidents.
. Emergency response team—The first responders for the organization. They are tasked with evacuating personnel and saving lives.
. Emergency management team—Executives and line managers that are financially and legally responsible. They must also handle the media and public relations.
. Damage assessment team—The estimators. They must determine the damage and estimate the recovery time.
. Salvage team—Those responsible for reconstructing damaged facilities. This includes cleaning up, recovering assets, creating documentation for insurance filings or legal actions, and restoring paper documents and electronic media.
. Communications team—Those responsible for installing communications (data, voice, phone, fax, radio) at the recovery site.
. Security team—Those who manage the security of the organization during the time of crisis. They must maintain order after a disaster.

Paper Tests
The most basic method of BCP testing is the paper test. Although it is not considered a replacement for a real test, this is a good start. A paper test is an exercise that can be performed by sending copies of the plan to different department managers and business unit managers for review. Each person the plan is sent to can review it to make sure nothing has been overlooked, and that everything that is being asked of them is possible. A paper test can also be performed by having the members of the team come together and discuss the BCP plan. This is sometimes known as walk-through testing. The plans are laid out across the table so that attendees have a chance to see how an actual emergency would be handled. By reviewing the plan in this way, some errors or problems should become apparent. Under either method, sending the plan around or meeting to review the plan, the next step is usually a preparedness test.

Preparedness Tests
A preparedness test is a simulation

Chance and uncertainty are part of the world we live in. We cannot predict what tomorrow will bring or whether a disaster will occur—but this doesn’t mean that we cannot plan for it. As an example, the city of Tampa, Florida, is in an area prone to hurricanes. Just because the possibility of a hurricane in winter in Tampa is extremely low doesn’t mean that planning can’t take place to reduce the potential negative impact. This is what the BIA is about. Its purpose is to think through all possible disasters that could take place, assess the risk, quantify the impact, determine the loss, and develop a plan to deal with the incidents that seem most likely to occur.

As a result, the BIA should present a clear picture of what is needed to continue operations if a disaster occurs. The individuals responsible for the BIA must look at the organization from many different angles and use information from a variety of inputs. For the BIA to be successful, the BIA team must know what key business processes are. Questions the team must ask when determining critical processes might include the following: