ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on some of the factors to be considered by continuity planning professionals who must advance their skills and approaches to keep up with swiftly evolving cur-rent events. Continuity planners have been shifting the emphasis to business process planning as the starting point for any meaningful continuity planning exercise. As enterprise risk is assessed, through either traditional risk analysis/assessment mechanisms or through business impact assessments, understanding potential impacts from these expanded threats is essential and prudent. The composition of crisis management and continuity planning teams is changing as well. The evolution from preparing disaster recovery plans for mainframe data centers to performing full-scope continuity planning and, of late, to planning for the continuous operations of Web-based infrastructure begs the question of process improvement. The growth of the Internet and E-business, corporate upheavals, and the tragedy of September 11 and subsequent events have all contributed to the changing face of continuity planning.
