Business continuity may be defined as “the capability of an organization to continue the delivery of products or services at pre-defined acceptable levels following a disruptive incident”, and business continuity planning  (or business continuity and resiliency planning) is the process of creating systems of prevention and recovery to deal with potential threats to a company. In addition to prevention, the goal is to enable ongoing operations before and during execution of disaster recovery. Business continuity is the intended outcome of proper execution of both business continuity planning and disaster recovery.

Several business continuity standards have been published by various standards bodies to assist in check listing ongoing planning tasks.

An organization’s resistance to failure is “the ability to withstand changes in its environment and still function”. Often called resilience, it is a capability that enables organizations to either endure environmental changes without having to permanently adapt, or the organization is forced to adapt a new way of working that better suits the new environmental conditions.