Product Overview

Summary: This SOP provides a clear, practical framework for how your organisation will prepare for, respond to, and recover from disruptive events such as cyber incidents, natural disasters, system failures or loss of key staff. It aligns with Australian expectations for business resilience, helping you protect critical operations, meet stakeholder obligations, and get back to business faster after an incident.

In Australia, businesses face a growing range of disruptions—from bushfires, floods and severe storms through to cyber-attacks, telecommunications outages and sudden loss of key personnel. Without a structured approach, even a short interruption can quickly escalate into lost revenue, reputational damage and non-compliance with contractual or regulatory obligations. This Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning SOP gives your organisation a step-by-step, repeatable method for identifying critical functions, planning for different disruption scenarios, and coordinating an effective response when an incident occurs.

The procedure is designed for organisations of all sizes, from small practices through to multi-site operations. It helps you define roles and responsibilities, establish recovery time objectives, document alternative work arrangements, and integrate IT disaster recovery with broader business continuity arrangements. By implementing this SOP, you create a single, accessible reference point that guides your team before, during and after a disruptive event, supporting better decision-making, faster recovery and clear communication with staff, clients, regulators and insurers.

Developed for the Australian context, this SOP recognises local risk drivers such as extreme weather, regional connectivity issues and evolving cyber threats. It supports your due diligence obligations under WHS and corporate governance frameworks by ensuring that continuity and recovery are planned, tested, and regularly reviewed—not left to chance.

Key Benefits

• Protect critical services by clearly identifying essential functions, dependencies and recovery priorities.
• Reduce downtime by establishing structured response and recovery procedures for different disruption scenarios.
• Support compliance by demonstrating due diligence in risk management to boards, regulators, clients and insurers.
• Strengthen resilience by integrating IT disaster recovery with broader business, people and facilities continuity plans.
• Improve communication by defining clear roles, escalation paths and stakeholder messaging during and after an incident.

Who is this for?

• Business Owners
• Chief Executive Officers (CEOs)
• Chief Operating Officers (COOs)
• IT Managers
• Cyber Security Managers
• Risk and Compliance Managers
• Business Continuity Managers
• WHS and Emergency Management Coordinators
• Operations Managers
• Facilities Managers
• Practice Managers (Health, Legal, Accounting)
• Local Government Managers
• Not-for-Profit Executive Directors
• Project Managers
• Office Managers

Included Sections

• 1.0 Purpose, Scope and Objectives
• 2.0 Definitions and Key Concepts (DR vs BCP vs Emergency Response)
• 3.0 Roles, Responsibilities and Authority During Disruptions
• 4.0 Business Impact Analysis (Critical Functions and Dependencies)
• 5.0 Risk Assessment and Scenario Planning (Natural, Technical and Human-Caused Events)
• 6.0 Business Continuity Strategies (People, Premises, Technology, Suppliers)
• 7.0 IT Disaster Recovery Planning (Systems, Data, Backups and Recovery Timeframes)
• 8.0 Incident Activation Criteria and Escalation Procedures
• 9.0 Response and Stabilisation Procedures (First 24–72 Hours)
• 10.0 Recovery and Restoration Procedures (Returning to Normal or New Normal)
• 11.0 Communication and Stakeholder Management (Internal and External)
• 12.0 Coordination with WHS Emergency Management and Crisis Management Plans
• 13.0 Documentation, Recordkeeping and Version Control
• 14.0 Training, Awareness and Team Readiness
• 15.0 Testing, Exercises and Continuous Improvement
• 16.0 Review, Audit and Management Approval
• 17.0 Appendices – Templates, Checklists and Contact Lists

Legislation & References

• AS ISO 22301:2019 Security and resilience – Business continuity management systems – Requirements
• AS ISO 31000:2018 Risk management – Guidelines
• AS ISO/IEC 27001:2023 Information security, cybersecurity and privacy protection – Information security management systems (for ICT-related disruptions)
• Safe Work Australia – Model Code of Practice: Managing the work environment and facilities (for maintaining safe workplaces during disruptions)
• Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) – Directors’ duties relating to risk and business continuity governance
• Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) scheme (for data breach and cyber incident continuity planning)