BS25999 Emerges
BS 25999 evolved from a document called PAS 56. PAS stands for ‘Publicly Available Specification’ and is a pre-standard document used for consultation.
The British Standards Institute, in conjunction with the Business Continuity Institute (in the UK – who have a common approach to BCM as the American Disaster Research Institute – DRI) and Insight Consulting Ltd published a guide which established the process, principles and terminology of BCM. This document was also produced in conjunction with a number of other organizations, including Sainsbury's, EDS, The Post Office and the OGC.
Specifically, PAS 56 described the activities within, and 'outcomes' of, establishing a BCM process, and provided a series of recommendations for good practice. It provided a generic management framework for incident anticipation and response, as well as describing evaluation techniques and criteria. PAS 56 was withdrawn when BS 25999 was issued, having served its purpose.
BS25999
BS25999 itself comes in two parts:
-
• BS 25999-1 Code of Practice
It is this part that replaces PAS 56. Based heavily upon the PAS 56 contents, it will be a code or best practices and recommendations.
• BS 25999-2 Specification
This publication is known as the 'Specification for Business Continuity Management'. It is this part against which certification will eventually be available.
BS 25999 Part 1 closely resembles PAS 56 and the Part 2 will be the specification and is the part of the standard that certification is granted against.
Certification will be offered in due course. The certification process will be somewhat similar to existing certification processes for ISO 27001, ISO 9000, and ISO 14000. Details will be reported here when available.
