Fundamental Definitions: Understanding the Differences Between Crisis Management and Business Continuity

Whether your organization is just you and a handful of other staff or a global corporation with dozens or hundreds of sites throughout the world, all organizations can be affected by disruptions. From natural disasters and cyberattacks to public health emergencies and mass civil unrest, incidents can impact an organization’s business continuity. This means that security departments must work with both internal and external stakeholders to ensure that the organization’s business continuity program can enable a quick recovery.

While there are several terms in this field that appear synonymous, the terms in fact have nuanced different meanings. To help you better understand, Security Management has compiled a list of such terms and their definitions from ASIS International’s Business Continuity Management Guideline.