The 16 Most Essential Books for Business Continuity Directors

Solutions Review compiles the 16 essential books that business continuity directors or managers need to add to their reading lists.

Business continuity directors take on a massive responsibility. Knowing how to avoid downtime and simultaneously keep your business running smoothly is critical. Whether hardcover or digital, books are an excellent source for professionals looking to learn about a specific field of technology, and business continuity directors are no exception. We’ve listed the top 16 books that business continuity directors should add to their reading lists. These books are intended for beginners and experts alike and are written by authors with proficiency and recognition in business continuity.

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Note: Titles are listed in no particular order.

Business Continuity and Risk Management: Essentials of Organizational Resilience

By Kurt J. Engemann and Douglas M. Henderson

“As an instructor, you have seen business continuity and risk management grow exponentially, offering an exciting array of career possibilities to your students. They need the tools needed to begin their careers — and to be ready for industry changes and new career paths. You cannot afford to use limited and inflexible teaching materials that might close doors or limit their options. Written with your classroom in mind, Business Continuity and Risk Management: Essentials of Organizational Resilience is the flexible, modular textbook you have been seeking — combining business continuity and risk management.”

Business Continuity from Preparedness to Recovery: A Standards-Based Approach

By Eugene Tucker

“Business Continuity from Preparedness to Recovery: A Standards-Based Approach details the process for building organizational resiliency and managing Emergency and Business Continuity programs. With over 30 years of experience developing plans that have been tested by fire, floods, and earthquakes, Tucker shows readers how to avoid common traps and ensure a successful program, utilizing, detailed Business Impact Analysis (BIA) questions, continuity strategies and planning considerations for specific business functions.”

Business Continuity Management: Global Best Practices

By Andrew Hiles

“At this critical point in your Business Continuity Management studies and research, you need one definitive, comprehensive professional textbook that will take you to the next step. In his 4th edition of Business Continuity Management: Global Best Practices, Andrew Hiles gives you a wealth of real-world analysis and advice – based on international standards and grounded in best practices — a textbook for today, a reference for your entire career. With so much to learn in this changing profession, you don’t want to risk missing out on something you’ll need later.”

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning for IT Professionals

By Susan Snedaker

“The new 2^nd Edition of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for IT Professionals gives you the most up-to-date planning and risk management techniques for business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR). With distributed networks, increasing demands for confidentiality, integrity and availability of data, and the widespread risks to the security of personal, confidential and sensitive data, no organization can afford to ignore the need for disaster planning.”

The Disaster Recovery Handbook: A Step-By-Step Plan to Ensure Business Continuity and Protect Vital Operations, Facilities, and Assets

By Michael Wallace and Lawrence Webber

“With The Disaster Recovery Handbook by your side–including the third edition’s updates of emerging risks, developments in IT networking, and information security–you can learn how to avoid a great deal of potential trouble for your organization. And when the unavoidable, unpredictable disasters occur, you will know that you have planned for every contingency and have ensured that your company is responsible, ready, and resilient.”

Adaptive Business Continuity: A New Approach

By David Lindstedt and Mark Armour

“Adaptive Business Continuity: A New Approach uses the analogy of rebuilding a house. After the initial design, the first step is to identify and remove all the things not needed in the new house. Thus, the first chapter is “Demolition” – not to get rid of the entire BC enterprise, but to remove certain BC activities and products to provide the space to install something new. The stages continue through foundation, framework, and finishing. Finally, the last chapter is “Dwelling,” permitting you a glimpse of what it might be like to live in this new home that has been created.”

Disaster Recovery, Crisis Response, and Business Continuity: A Management Desk Reference

By Jamie Watters and Janet Watters

“A practical how-to guide, this book explains exactly what you need to do to set up and run a successful business continuity program. Written by an experienced consultant with 25 years industry experience in disaster recovery and business continuity, it contains tools and techniques to make business continuity, crisis management, and IT service continuity much easier. If you need to prepare plans and test and maintain them, then this book is written for you.”

Business Continuity Planning: A Step-By-Step with Planning Forms

By Kenneth L. Fulmer

“In more than thirty years as a business continuity practitioner, I have seen many small and medium-size businesses pay the penalty for lack of preparedness. Often, overwhelmed by the jargon employed by many practitioners and the mistaken concepts that business continuity is too costly, that it is only for the “big boys,” and that they do not have the resources or knowledge base, they choose to take the risk instead. For many, it is an unfortunate choice because much can be done with reasonable commitment to avoid business disruptions or mitigate the impact for those that are unavoidable… In this excellent primer, Mr. Fulmer sets out a simple, concise, and, most of all, logical roadmap both for developing the justification for a business continuity/disaster recovery program as well as for developing and maintaining the resultant plan.

Business Continuity Management System: A Complete Guide to Implementing ISO 22301

By Wei Ning Zechariah Wong and Jianping Shi

“Business Continuity Management System offers a complete guide to implementing a fit-for-purpose resilience capability in any organization. Structured in line with ISO 22301 and with a focus on performance improvement throughout, chapters cover developing, establishing and operating a BCMS initiative. Built upon the principles of the International Standard and current best practice, with a practical focus on theories and models, this book offers an objective, thorough solution for the practitioner.”

A Risk Management Approach to Business Continuity: Aligning Business Continuity with Corporate Governance

By Julia Graham and David Kaye

“Julia Graham and David Kaye, two globally recognized risk management experts with experience in 50 countries, were among the first to recognize the interrelationship of Risk Management and Business Continuity and demonstrate how to integrate them with Corporate Governance enterprise-wide. They focus on all the factors that must be considered when developing a comprehensive Business Continuity Plan, especially for multi-location or multinational companies. Endorsed by The Business Continuity Institute, Institute for Risk Management, and Disaster Recovery Institute International, the book includes: Chapter objectives, summaries and bibliographies; charts, sample forms, checklists throughout.”

Mastering Business Continuity Management

By Dr. Michael C. Redmond PhD

“This book takes a complicated subject and breaks it down into plain English, allowing for concepts, definitions, and so much more to be absorbed and understood. It offers a detailed understanding of what is crucial in Business Continuity Management, and the practical steps and stories help the reader implement each phase of planning including: Project Management, Gap Analysis, Risk Evaluation and Control, Business Impact Analysis, Strategic Planning, Emergency Response and Operations, Awareness and Training, Maintaining and Exercising Plans, Public Relations and Crisis Coordination, and more.”

Faster Disaster Recovery: The Business Owner’s Guide to Developing a Business Continuity Plan

By Jennifer H. Elder and Samuel F. Elder

“Faster Disaster Recovery provides a 10-step approach for business owners on creating a disaster recovery plan (from both natural and man-made events). Each chapter ends with thought-provoking questions that allow business owners to explore their particular situation…There’s no time like the present to develop a business contingency plan―and this book shows you how.”

25 Ways to Increase Your Business Resilience: A Simple Guide to Implementing Business Continuity and Contingency Planning for Businesses

By Keith Erwood, Eric Lofholm, and Jermaine Jackson

“25 Ways To Increase Your Business Resilience. A simple Guide to Implementing Business Continuity and Contingency Planning for Business was written with small and midsized businesses in mind. It was written to provide them with the basic information and tools needed to develop a plan from start to finish. More than just a book providing the steps for each phase, you’ll gain access to tools Keith uses when he consults directly with his clients. These include a Risk Assessment, Business Impact Analysis and Financial Impact Analysis tools. These form the basis for the information gathering you need to begin and form the foundation of your plans.”

Business Continuity Management: Building an Effective Incident Management Plan

By Michael Blyth

“Written by Michael Blyth – one of the world’s foremost consultants in the field of business contingency management – this audiobook provides cost-conscious executives with a structured, sustainable, and time-tested blueprint toward developing an individualized, strategic business-continuity program. This timely audiobook urges security managers, HR directors, program managers, and CEOs to manage nonfinancial crises to protect your company and its employees.”

Testing Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plans: How to Plan and Execute Successful Tests

By A. Alex Fullick

“If Fullick’s concise recipe for business planning success could be distilled into a single sentence, it might read: Disaster is inevitable, change is constant, and the process of planning must be ongoing. If it isn’t already, this book should become the go-to handbook for front-line senior executives when they want to make sure their disaster and continuity plans will work when they’re needed.”

Principles and Practice of Business Continuity: Tools and Techniques

By Jim Burtles

“Are you are a Business Continuity Manager training for the job? Are you ready to keep the business up and running in the face of emergencies ranging from earthquakes to accidents to fires to computer crashes? In this second edition of Principles and Practice of Business Continuity: Tools and Techniques, Jim Burtles explains six main scenarios. He promises: If you and your organization are prepared to deal with these six generic risks, you will be able to recover from any business disaster.”

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