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The publication of the ISO/IEC 27031:2025 standard marks a paradigm shift in organizational resilience and fundamentally redefines the relationship between Business Continuity Management (BCM) and ICT Readiness for Business Continuity (IRBC). The traditional view of IRBC as a reactive, technical support function is obsolete.

The new standard elevates IRBC to an independent management system that acts as a strategic partner to BCM to ensure holistic and demonstrable organizational resilience. At the heart of this transformation are two decisive governance instruments: the “Proof Chain” – a seamless, verifiable evidence chain that directly links every business requirement to its validated technical implementation – and the “Final Minimum Business Continuity Objective” (Final MBCO).

The Final MBCO is a formal, top-management-approved definition of the service level considered realistic and acceptable in a crisis. It serves to close the often-existing gap between the requirements of business units and what is technically feasible.

The Strategic Imperative: Building a Unified Resilience Front

ISO/IEC 27031:2025 forces a fundamental reassessment of the role of IT continuity within corporate strategy. The days when IT continuity—often called disaster recovery or IT service continuity management—was considered a purely technical discipline operating in the basement of the IT department are definitively over. The standard positions IRBC as an integral component of a holistic resilience strategy within the management context and demands deep, collaborative integration with the Business Continuity Management System.

From Support Function to Strategic Partner
The traditional relationship between BCM and what has historically been understood as ITSCM was often hierarchical and reactive: BCM defined requirements through a Business Impact Analysis (BIA), and IT attempted to implement them technically. This approach frequently led to silos and misunderstandings. ISO/IEC 27031:2025 breaks radically with this model.

According to Clause 6 of the standard, the “integration of IRBC into BCM” is now a normative requirement. IRBC is understood as an independent management system that proactively contributes to strategic resilience. It is no longer just about restart and recovery of systems, but about designing resilient system and application architectures and processes. For the BC Manager, this means that the IRBC counterpart is no longer just a service provider but a strategic partner.

Shared Governance: Establishing a Resilience Board
To bring this strategic partnership to life, the standard demands a formalized governance structure. Clauses 6.2 and 13 make it clear that resilience is a leadership responsibility. In practice, this requirement is most effectively implemented through the establishment of a central steering committee, often referred to as a “Resilience Board.”

The advantage of such an interdisciplinary group over a governance model driven solely by the CIO or head of IT lies in its holistic, business-oriented perspective. While an IT leader naturally prioritizes technological aspects, the Resilience Board ensures that decisions align with strategic business goals, risk tolerance, and the financial realities of the entire organization.

Ideally, coordination of this board is handled by a dedicated Resilience Manager with a cross-disciplinary view of all resilience functions. Until such a role is established, the BC Manager—working closely with the IRBC Manager—is the driving force shaping the board’s agenda and ensuring strategic alignment. The board’s responsibilities include approving resilience strategies, authorizing the Final MBCO, allocating budgets, and formally accepting residual risks.

The Core of Collaboration: Mastering the Proof Chain from BIA to ICT Restart and Recovery

The central element of the new BCM-IRBC partnership is the “Proof Chain.” This concept represents the seamless, documented, and verifiable pathway that connects a time-critical business process to its validated technical solution for restart and recovery. The purpose of the Proof Chain is to replace assumptions with facts and provide indisputable evidence of continuity capability.

Definition of the Proof Chain: From Business Need to Verifiable Evidence
The Proof Chain is a continuous process that logically derives from the structure of the standard. It begins with the business requirements from the BIA (Clause 7.2), is translated into technical objectives (Clause 8.2), results in concrete plans and architectures (Clause 10.3), and is ultimately validated through tests (Clause 11). Every step must be documented to ensure an “audit-proof documentation.”

Step-by-Step Breakdown of Roles and Responsibilities Successful implementation of the Proof Chain depends on clear and symbiotic collaboration between BCM and IRBC. Each function has a distinct yet inseparably linked role.

• The Role of BCM: The BC Manager initiates and anchors the Proof Chain in the business context. Their primary responsibility is to define the what, why, and when of continuity. This is done through a robust and well-substantiated BIA. They derive business tolerance times (BIA-RTO/RPO) and the initial required service level (Initial MBCO).

• The Role of IRBC: The IRBC organization is responsible for the how. It receives precise requirements from BCM and translates them into technical specifications (ICT-RTO/RPO). Its task is to design resilient technical architectures and solutions.

Beyond the BIA: Defining and Using the Final MBCO

ISO/IEC 27031:2025 introduces the Final Minimum Business Continuity Objective (Final MBCO) as a significant governance concept. It is a strategic risk-management contract that closes the gap between the idealized requirements of the BIA and reality.

The Final MBCO as a Risk-Management Contract
In practice, there is often a gap between what the business needs in an emergency (the Initial MBCO) and what IT systems and processes can realistically deliver. The Final MBCO process, as described in Clause 12, forces the organization to confront this risk explicitly.

The Final MBCO is the result of a formal process that considers technical and organizational feasibility, dependencies, and insights from testing. It defines the minimum acceptable service level that can realistically be achieved after restart and recovery. Formal approval of this level by top management (Clause 13.2) transforms a technical limitation into a deliberate strategic decision.

The Governance Workflow
The process for defining the Final MBCO is a core element of resilience governance and can be broken down into the following steps. The BC Manager—together with the IRBC Manager—is the driving force behind the Final MBCO process. The workflow typically includes:

• Gap Identification: Based on the Proof Chain (gap analysis), the discrepancy between the BIA-required service level and the currently achievable level is articulated. This is done within a comprehensive solution concept describing the gap, the associated risk, and the potential investment required to mitigate it. The concept considers not only IT failures but also scenarios such as building, personnel, or vendor outages.

• Presentation of Options: A decision paper is prepared for top management or the Resilience Board. This document must contain clear, evaluated options. The IRBC Manager provides technical solution options, costs, and timelines. Typical options include:

  • Invest: Close the gap through targeted investments

  • Mitigate: Reduce the risk through alternative strategies, such as manual workarounds

  • Accept: Formally accept the risk and document the lower, achievable service level as the Final MBCO, provided this is permissible from a regulatory and contractual standpoint

[*]Formalization of the Decision: The decision is formally documented, signed by top management, and communicated. The approved Final MBCO becomes the new binding target and must be planned and embedded in all relevant BCPs and IT recovery plans.

This process elevates the topic to the top-management agenda. The BC Manager acts as a moderator enabling a well-informed strategic risk decision. The documented Final MBCO becomes a tool for future budget negotiations and establishes clear accountability for the chosen risk-level.

Case Study: Managing an Operational Outage in a Production Environment

To illustrate the theoretical concepts, consider a practical scenario. A global automotive supplier operating on a just-in-time production model is critically dependent on its Manufacturing Execution System (MES).

Scenario Setup
During a planned maintenance window, an apparently uncritical software update is applied to the central MES. After restarting the system, an undiscovered error in the update results in a corrupted production-planning database. All assembly lines come to a halt. This is a classic production outage caused by a faulty change process.

The Proof Chain in Action

• BIA & Requirements Definition: The BIA led by the BC Manager classified the “assembly line operation” process as the most time-critical. The analysis yielded a BIA-RTO of 4 hours. The Initial MBCO derived from the BIA was defined as: “Restart of production planning for at least 80% of assembly lines.”

• Technical Translation: The IRBC organization translated this business requirement into a technical target: an ICT-RTO of 3 hours for the MES application, its database, and the necessary IT infrastructure.

• The Gap and the Final MBCO: A previous gap analysis showed that full database restoration from tape backup would take 8 hours. This risk was presented to the Resilience Board. Management approved investment in a high-availability solution—but limited it to the core production-planning module due to cost. The result was a documented and approved Final MBCO: “Restoration of core production-planning functionality within the ICT-RTO of 3 hours. Complete reporting and analytics modules may follow within 24 hours.”

Activation of the Plan
The line stoppage immediately triggers a highest-priority incident:

• The IRBC organization activates the IT recovery plan and initiates failover to the secondary site.

• Simultaneously, the BCM organization activates its BCP. Its primary roles are strategic coordination and communication: informing top management, communicating proactively with key customers, and coordinating with logistics partners.

Achieving the Final MBCO
Thanks to the prior strategic decision, the IRBC organization restores core MES functionality at the secondary site within 2.5 hours. This restart time had been validated through functional testing and was thus reliable. The BCM organization coordinates validation of the system with production leads. The assembly lines resume operations 3.5 hours after the initial outage. The BIA-RTO of 4 hours is met.

Lessons Learned
The post-incident review confirms the value of the Proof Chain and Final MBCO processes. However, it also uncovers a new vulnerability: A network switch in the secondary data center is identified as a potential single point of failure during functional testing. This insight is fed back into the Proof Chain as a concrete improvement measure.

Final Analysis: Operational Outage vs. Cyberattack – A Resilience Perspective

Successful handling of the operational outage must not lead to the false conclusion that the organization is now prepared for all threats. It is essential to understand and communicate the difference between an operational outage and a targeted cyberattack, as the response paradigms differ fundamentally.

The Critical Distinction: Trusted vs. Untrusted Environment
The key difference lies in the integrity of the environment. The outage in the case study occurred in a trusted environment. The issue was a known fault in an otherwise intact infrastructure. Data, backups, and the recovery environment were considered clean and safe. A cyberattack—especially modern ransomware—turns the entire IT landscape into a potentially hostile, untrusted environment. Every system, every backup, and every network connection may be compromised. The primary goal is no longer just restoring availability but safely restoring into a clean environment without reintroducing the attacker or malware.

This also clarifies the distinction between continuity disciplines: While cyber incident response focuses on containment, eradication, and forensic investigation of the threat, BCM and IRBC focus on achieving defined restart and recovery objectives (RTO) for time-critical business processes and maintaining operations at the agreed minimum level (Final MBCO). Both functions must work closely together but operate with different goals and methods.

Recommendations for BC Professionals

ISO/IEC 27031:2025 is more than a new standard. It is a mandate to strategically realign organizational resilience. For BC Managers, it presents an opportunity to redefine their role and significantly increase their influence within the organization. The following recommendations summarize the most important action areas:

• Embrace your role as a resilience orchestrator. Do not wait to be invited. Proactively establish a cross-functional Resilience Board and take a leading role within it. Your holistic view of the business uniquely positions you to synchronize resilience disciplines.

• Make the BIA your strategic foundation. Treat your BIA not as a static document but as the evidence-based starting point of the Proof Chain. Ensure results are clear, unambiguous, and robust. It forms the basis for every investment and risk decision.

• Master the Final MBCO process. Use the Final MBCO as your primary tool for strategic risk discussions with top management. Transform technical gaps into clear business decisions about investment, mitigation, or acceptance. Make risk tangible and decisions binding.

• Forge a strategic alliance with your IRBC partner. Involve the IRBC Manager early in discussions about technology life cycles. Shift the dialogue from the narrow question “What is the RTO?” to the strategic question “How resilient is the architecture?”

• Demand evidence, not just plans. Insist on thorough, scenario-based testing that provides hard metrics, as required by Clause 11 of the standard. Your task is to validate whether technical tests meet the business definition of restart and recovery.

• Think beyond operational outages. Drive the development of cyber-resilience strategies. Understand and articulate the need for different approaches to survive a malicious attack—not just a technical fault.
  
  

Shape Your Resilience Proactively

The transformation to integrated, evidence-based resilience according to ISO/IEC 27031:2025 is a complex strategic undertaking that goes far beyond traditional disaster recovery planning. If you are looking for an experienced partner to support you in implementing the Proof Chain, facilitating the Final MBCO process, and developing robust, scenario-based resilience strategies, we are here to help. Contact us to schedule a non-binding consultation and develop a clear roadmap for strengthening your organizational resilience.