Business Continuity
Plan, test and evidence continuity for critical business services
Map critical business services and their dependencies, set impact tolerances, maintain business-continuity plans, run and record exercises, and evidence readiness — so the organisation can keep operating through disruption and demonstrate operational resilience. OnyxOne Business Continuity replaces continuity plans that live in a binder no one has opened since the last audit with a living model of what the firm must keep running, what it depends on, and proof that its plans actually work.
How it works, visually
An illustrative 5×5 likelihood × impact heatmap — the kind of view risk teams work from. Values are an example.
The problems this module solves
The operational realities that make this hard for compliance and risk teams today.
Continuity plans are written once and never opened
Plans are drafted to pass an audit, filed, and forgotten. By the time disruption strikes, the contacts are wrong, the steps assume systems that have since changed, and the plan is a document rather than something the organisation can actually execute under pressure.
Nobody knows what's truly critical
Every team believes its service is essential, so 'critical' loses meaning. Without an agreed, impact-based view of which business services must keep running and within what tolerance, continuity effort is spread thin and the genuinely critical services are protected no better than the rest.
Dependencies are invisible until they break
A critical service quietly depends on a specific system, a single supplier or one team. The dependency is undocumented, so its failure takes the service down with it and the firm discovers the chain of impact only while it is happening.
Exercises are rare, informal and unrecorded
Continuity plans are seldom tested, and when they are, the exercise is a tabletop with no structured record of what was tested, what failed and what was fixed. There is no evidence the plan works and no mechanism to improve it between events.
Resilience can't be evidenced to regulators
Supervisors increasingly expect firms to prove operational resilience — to show critical services, impact tolerances and tested recovery. A binder of static plans cannot answer 'show us you can stay within tolerance', and assembling the evidence by hand is slow and incomplete.
How OnyxOne addresses it
A live map of critical business services
Define your critical business services and set an impact tolerance for each — the maximum tolerable disruption before harm becomes unacceptable. Criticality is agreed and impact-based rather than self-declared, so continuity effort concentrates where disruption would actually hurt.
Dependencies mapped end to end
Each critical service is linked to the people, processes, systems, facilities and third parties it relies on. The chain of dependency is explicit, so the impact of any single failure is visible in advance and single points of failure can be found and removed before they bite.
Continuity plans that stay current
Plans live on the platform, linked to the services they protect, with owners, review cadence and version history. When a service or dependency changes, the plan that covers it is flagged for update — so what you would execute in a crisis reflects how the business actually runs today.
Structured exercises with recorded outcomes
Schedule and run continuity exercises — tabletop, simulation or live — against a defined scenario, capturing what was tested, what failed and the actions to fix it. Every exercise leaves durable evidence and a set of improvements, so plans get better rather than just being ticked.
Resilience evidence on demand
Because critical services, tolerances, dependencies, plans and exercise results all live in one connected model, the firm can show its resilience posture and its testing history on request — turning 'prove you can stay within tolerance' from a fire drill into a report.
What's in the module
Turn on what you need and add more as your programme scales.
Critical service register
Define critical business services with owners, descriptions and agreed criticality based on business impact.
Impact tolerances
Set the maximum tolerable disruption for each critical service, against which readiness and testing are measured.
Business impact analysis
Assess the consequences of disruption over time to determine recovery priorities and resourcing.
Dependency mapping
Link services to the people, processes, systems, facilities and third parties they rely on, exposing single points of failure.
Continuity plan library
Maintain versioned continuity plans linked to the services they protect, with owners and review cadence.
Exercise management
Schedule, run and record tabletop, simulation and live exercises against defined scenarios.
Recovery strategies
Document recovery and workaround strategies for each critical service and its key dependencies.
Findings & improvement actions
Capture what failed in exercises and real events, and drive improvement actions to closure.
Call trees & contacts
Maintain current response roles, contacts and escalation paths so plans can actually be activated.
Immutable readiness history
Every plan version, exercise and improvement action is preserved as durable resilience evidence.
The views your team works from
Purpose-built dashboards and views, each answering a question a specific role needs to act on.
A representative layout of the KPI tiles and charts these dashboards present. Figures shown are illustrative examples, not real data.
Critical service map
Every critical business service with its impact tolerance, owner and current readiness status at a glance.
Dependency explorer
The dependency chain for each service, with single points of failure and concentration highlighted.
Plan status board
Continuity plans by service, showing version, last review, next review and any plans flagged for update.
Exercise calendar & results
Scheduled and completed exercises with outcomes, findings and the improvement actions they raised.
Resilience posture
A leadership view of readiness against tolerances across all critical services, with testing history.
What the platform automates
Rules, workflows, alerts and scheduling that run the routine so your team works the exceptions.
Plan-review scheduling
Continuity plans enter their review cycle automatically and owners are prompted before a review falls due.
Change-triggered plan flags
When a linked service or dependency changes, the affected plan is flagged for review without manual tracking.
Exercise scheduling & reminders
Exercises are scheduled on cadence and participants reminded, so testing happens on time rather than when someone remembers.
Improvement-action follow-up
Findings from exercises and real events become tracked actions that are reminded and escalated until closed.
Readiness-gap alerts
Services without a current plan, a recent test or a mapped dependency are surfaced automatically for attention.
Where AI helps the analyst
Assistive, decision-support features that speed up the work on the record. Suggestions are always reviewable, and a person stays in control of every decision.
Dependency-gap surfacing
Suggests likely missing dependencies for a service based on similar mapped services, for a person to confirm rather than accept blindly.
Exercise-scenario drafting
Drafts plausible disruption scenarios and exercise scripts from a service's dependency map, which the continuity owner reviews and adapts.
Findings summarisation
Summarises exercise and incident findings into proposed improvement actions, leaving prioritisation and ownership to a person.
The enterprise workflow
A defined, end-to-end process with clear ownership at every stage.
Every result, decision and override is captured against the record it belongs to.
Identify critical services
Agree which business services are critical and set an impact tolerance for each, so effort concentrates where disruption would cause real harm.
Analyse impact & dependencies
Run business impact analysis and map each service to the people, processes, systems and third parties it depends on.
Build continuity plans
Document recovery strategies and continuity plans for each critical service, linked to its dependencies and owned by a named role.
Exercise the plans
Test plans against defined scenarios through tabletops, simulations or live exercises, capturing what works and what fails.
Remediate & improve
Turn exercise findings and real-event lessons into improvement actions with owners and target dates, tracked to closure.
Evidence resilience
Report critical services, tolerances, dependencies and testing history to leadership and regulators from one connected record.
What your team gains
Effort where disruption hurts
Impact-based criticality and tolerances focus continuity investment on the services that genuinely matter rather than spreading it evenly.
Dependencies you can see coming
End-to-end dependency mapping exposes single points of failure before an incident does, so they can be removed in advance.
Plans that reflect the real business
Plans linked to services and dependencies are flagged for update when things change, so what you'd execute in a crisis is not out of date.
Proof the plan actually works
Structured exercises leave durable evidence and improvement actions, so readiness is demonstrated rather than assumed.
Resilience evidence without the scramble
One connected model of services, tolerances, plans and tests means regulatory resilience evidence is reported, not reconstructed.
Faster, calmer response
Current plans, mapped dependencies and up-to-date contacts mean that when disruption hits, the organisation executes rather than improvises.
Industries it serves
Works with your existing systems
Described as capabilities — OnyxOne connects to the systems your deployment requires, configured per implementation.
- Links business-continuity plans to the technology recovery plans and RTO/RPO objectives in the disaster-recovery module for a single resilience picture
- Draws on operational-risk exposures and incident history to prioritise services and inform continuity planning
- Maps supplier dependencies against the third-party-risk register so concentration and outsourcing risk are visible in continuity
- Ingests service and system inventory from your existing asset and configuration sources to keep dependency maps accurate
- Routes exercise tasks, plan-review reminders and improvement actions through your existing email and messaging channels
Security, compliance & reporting
Security & data handling
- Continuity plans, dependency maps and exercise records are encrypted in transit and at rest, with access governed by role-based permissions.
- Sensitive dependency and recovery detail can be restricted to named response and oversight roles.
- Every plan version, exercise result and improvement action is written to an append-only audit trail.
- Response contacts and call trees are access-controlled and kept current alongside the identity directory.
- Retention of plans, exercise evidence and readiness records is configurable to your regulatory obligations.
Compliance support
- Supports operational-resilience regimes that require identified important business services and impact tolerances
- Aligns with recognised business-continuity practice such as ISO 22301
- Provides tested-recovery and exercise evidence expected in regulatory examination
- Underpins outsourcing and third-party resilience expectations through dependency mapping
- Supplies documented, dated readiness evidence for internal audit and supervisory review
Reports & exports
- Critical business service register with impact tolerances
- Business impact analysis and recovery-priority reports
- Dependency maps and single-point-of-failure reports
- Continuity plan inventory with version and review status
- Exercise schedule, results and findings reports
- Improvement-action status and readiness-evidence packs
How to get the most from it
Let impact define what's critical
Set criticality from the harm disruption would cause, not from how loudly each team argues. Impact tolerances give you an objective basis and stop 'everything is critical'.
Map dependencies before you plan
A plan that ignores what a service depends on will fail at the weakest link. Map people, systems and suppliers first, then build the plan around the real chain.
Exercise realistically and record it
Test against scenarios that could actually happen and capture what failed. An exercise with no honest findings is theatre, not assurance.
Close the loop after every test
Turn exercise findings into tracked improvement actions. The value of testing is in the fixes it drives, not in the fact that a test occurred.
Questions, answered
How do we decide which services are critical?
You define business services and set an impact tolerance for each — the maximum disruption tolerable before harm becomes unacceptable — supported by business impact analysis. Criticality is agreed and impact-based rather than self-declared, so effort concentrates where disruption would genuinely hurt.
Can we see what a service depends on?
Yes. Each critical service is mapped to the people, processes, systems, facilities and third parties it relies on, so the impact of any single failure is visible in advance and single points of failure can be identified and removed.
How are continuity plans kept current?
Plans live on the platform linked to the services they protect, with owners, a review cadence and version history. When a service or dependency changes, the affected plan is flagged for update, so plans reflect how the business runs today.
How does the module handle exercises?
You schedule and run exercises — tabletop, simulation or live — against defined scenarios, capturing what was tested, what failed and the actions to fix it. Every exercise leaves durable evidence and a set of improvement actions tracked to closure.
How does this relate to disaster recovery?
Business continuity covers keeping critical business services running; disaster recovery covers restoring the underlying technology. The two modules link, so continuity plans reference the technology recovery plans and RTO/RPO objectives that support them for one coherent resilience picture.
Related modules
See Business Continuity in your programme
Book a walkthrough and we'll show how this module fits your policy, workflows and obligations — then scope an implementation.