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1. The financial entities referred to in Article 16(1) of Regulation (EU) 2022/2554 shall develop their ICT business continuity plans considering the results of the analysis of their exposures to and potential impact of severe business disruptions and scenarios to which their ICT assets supporting critical or important functions might be exposed, including a cyber-attack scenario.
2. The ICT business continuity plans referred to in paragraph 1 shall:
(a) be approved by the management body of the financial entity;
(b) be documented and readily accessible in the event of an emergency or crisis;
(c) allocate sufficient resources for their execution;
(d) establish planned recovery levels and timeframes for the recovery and resumption of functions and key internal and external dependencies, including ICT third-party service providers;
(e) identify the conditions that may prompt the activation of the ICT business continuity plans and what actions are to be taken to ensure the availability, continuity, and recovery of the financial entities’ ICT assets supporting critical or important functions;
(f) identify the restoration and recovery measures for critical or important business functions, supporting processes, information assets, and their interdependencies to avoid adverse effects on the functioning of the financial entities;
(g) identify backup procedures and measures that specify the scope of the data that are subject to the backup, and the minimum frequency of the backup, based on the criticality of the function using those data;
(h) consider alternative options where recovery may not be feasible in the short term because of costs, risks, logistics, or unforeseen circumstances;
(i) specify the internal and external communication arrangements, including escalation plans;
(j) be updated in line with lessons learned from incidents, tests, new risks, and threats identified, changed recovery objectives, major changes to the financial entity’s organisation, and to the ICT assets supporting critical or business functions.
For the purposes of point (f), the measures referred to in that point shall provide for the mitigation of failures of critical third-party providers.
Sometimes an unexpected event, such as a fire, flood, or equipment failure, can cause downtime. In order to be able to continue operations as quickly and smoothly as possible, continuity planning is carried out, i.e. planning the operations in advance for these exceptional situations.
Each continuity plan shall contain at least the following information:
The organization should have a defined and well-documented recovery plan. The recovery plan should be able to be initiated during or after an incident. Recovery actions and measures will vary from incident to incident, for example, the type of incident can affect the actions taken. These actions could include:
The organization should adopt a 'build back better' mindset when rebuilding ICT systems. This means that systems should be rebuilt to a better state than they were before the incident.
The organization should regularly, at least annually, test and review its information security continuity plans to ensure that they are valid and effective in adverse situations.
Testing of continuity plans shall involve, as appropriate, stakeholders critical to each plan. The organisation should identify and document the necessary contacts with suppliers and partners.
In addition, the adequacy of continuity plans and associated management mechanisms should be reassessed in the event of significant changes in operations.
The organization has identified the tasks that are critical for the continuity of its operations. Alternative courses of action for specific exceptional situations and staff availability and contingency arrangements have been planned and prepared for the continuation of critical tasks.
To implement the continuation plans, the plan owners, their alternates and other persons required to implement the plan have been identified. In addition, their ability to carry out their tasks under normal circumstances has been ensured.
The organization must identify critical IT partners. A critical partner (internal or external) refers to a partner without whom the operation is interrupted.
The organisation should include the following topics into their continuity planning:
Continuity planning should take into account alternate communication options for situations primary communication means aren't operational. There should also be alternative options for storage, power and network strategies.
With adequate backups, all important data and programs can be restored after a disaster or media failure. To determine your backup strategy, it is important to map / decide on at least the following:
The organization must maintain a top-level strategy for continuity planning. The strategy should include at least:
In order to develop a strategy, it may be necessary to make use of general good practices, such as ISO 22300.
The organization shall have procedures in place to communicate effectively with stakeholders and other participants during continuity plans and survival procedures.
Communication plans related to continuity plans shall include:
Organizational recovery measures must be communicated as planned to critical individuals and management within the organization. Recovery measures must also be communicated to external stakeholders.
The organization regularly develops its continuity plans by analyzing the testing of the plans, training and their actual use in real situations.
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