ITcontinuity

ITcontinuity refers to the discipline of ensuring that information technology services and data remain available and functional during and after disruptions. It encompasses the planning, preparation, response, and recovery activities needed to keep critical IT capabilities operating in line with business requirements. The goal is to minimize outages, data loss, and service impact while preserving security and compliance.

Key elements include a governance framework, a business impact analysis to identify critical IT services and dependencies, and a risk assessment that prioritizes threats such as hardware failure, cyber incidents, natural disasters, and supply chain disruptions. Continuity strategies cover redundancy, geographic distribution of data and processing, regular backups, disaster recovery planning, failover to alternate sites or clouds, and transaction-level data protection. IT continuity also requires robust incident response, communications protocols, and decision-making processes for rapid restoration.

Common standards and practices inform ITcontinuity programs. ISO 22301 provides a system-wide blueprint for business continuity, while ISO/IEC 27031 offers guidelines for ICT readiness to support continuity. In IT service management, IT service continuity management (ITSCM) aligns with frameworks like ITIL. Practical implementation uses recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) to define target restoration capabilities, supported by testing, exercises, training, and maintenance. Third-party dependencies and supply chain continuity are often incorporated to ensure overall resilience. ITcontinuity is thus a cross-functional activity bridging IT operations, security, risk management, and business continuity to sustain critical services under adverse conditions.