Business Continuity Planning RFI/RFP questionnaire — 0-Doubt
Business Continuity Planning evaluation questionnaire
Start from a neutral baseline and add what matters to you. Criteria are labeled by source — the platform baseline is architecture-neutral; buyer-contributed criteria are shown separately.
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1. Weight what matters
30 criteria
baselineDoes the platform cover business impact analysis (BIA), plan authoring, and live incident execution/coordination as one connected workflow, or is it primarily a document-repository for static plans with no live-incident tooling?
baselineDescribe how the platform keeps recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) current as the underlying systems/dependencies change, and quantify plan-staleness reduction with a customer reference.
baselineWhat tabletop-exercise and simulation capability is built in — guided scenario templates, participant tracking, after-action reporting — versus requiring the customer to run exercises entirely outside the tool with no feedback loop back into the plan?
baselineHow does the platform map plan dependencies (which applications, vendors, and personnel each business process depends on), and is this dependency graph kept current automatically via integration or requires manual upkeep?
baselineDetail live-incident activation capability — can the platform actually coordinate a real incident (notify the response team, track task completion against the plan, log a real-time timeline) versus being reference-only during an actual event.
baselineWhat crisis communication capability exists — mass notification to employees/stakeholders across multiple channels (SMS, email, push, voice) — and what is the delivery confirmation/acknowledgment tracking for a real notification send?
baselineExplain how the platform supports regulatory/audit requirements for business continuity (e.g., ISO 22301, financial-sector operational resilience rules) — pre-built compliance mapping and evidence export, or does the customer build this manually?
baselineHow does the platform handle third-party/vendor continuity risk — does it track whether critical vendors have their own adequate continuity plans, or does it stop at the customer's own internal processes?
baselineWhat is the pricing model — per plan/business unit, per user, or a flat enterprise tier — and how does cost scale as the organization's number of business processes and plans requiring coverage both grow?
baselineAfter a real disruption event and plan activation, does the platform support a structured post-incident review that captures what worked, what didn't, and automatically flags specific plan sections needing revision — closing the loop between real events and plan currency?
baselineDetail historical trend reporting on plan readiness/currency (percentage of plans reviewed within the required cycle, dependency-map staleness trend) over time, suitable for demonstrating program maturity to leadership and auditors.
baselineWho within the organization gets access to completed BCP plans, and is there role-based access control given that a plan is essentially a documented map of the organization's critical dependencies and single points of failure?
baselineHow does the platform integrate with the customer's existing incident-response/crisis-management tooling — is BCP activation a genuinely coordinated part of the same incident workflow, or a separate, disconnected process requiring manual handoff during an actual event?
baselineDoes the platform support genuinely consistent plan management across a large, multi-site or multi-region organization with different regional dependencies and regulatory requirements, or does each site/region require a separately-managed, disconnected plan?
baselineIs the platform accessible offline or via a mobile app during an actual disruption when normal corporate systems and network access may themselves be unavailable — what is the specific fallback-access mechanism?
baselineWhat international/multi-jurisdiction regulatory requirements does the platform support beyond ISO 22301 (e.g., region-specific financial-sector operational resilience rules, sector-specific continuity mandates), and is coverage genuinely global or concentrated in one region?
baselineEnsure that backup systems are monitored daily, and disaster recovery plans are practiced annually, including validating backup integrity and performing tests to confirm system reliability.
baselineDemonstrate how the technology increases system resilience in energy delivery control systems or components.
baselineBidder must ensure that DR setup is ready on the date of Go Live of the solution.
baselineBidder shall maintain following documentation and share the same during the contract; each batch job (if any) can, following a failure, be restarted, and bidder shall provide estimates of recovery time.
baselineMSSP to have an approved Business Continuity Plan to support the financial institution's group companies for continuity of SOC Operations, and must comply with all requirements in SEBI's Cyber Security and Cyber Resilience Framework (CSCRF) as per applicability, submitting a compliance certificate and audit report by a CERT-In empanelled vendor before onboarding and annually.
baselineStandard Operating Procedures (SOPs) shall be developed for all products/solutions/services provided including alert management, incident management, forensics, report management, log storage/archiving, SOC business continuity, operational documents, escalation matrix, change management, use cases, knowledge documents, and playbooks.
baselineLog Management/Storage: logs available for live correlation/analysis online for 3 months and offline for 6 months; restoration of historical logs (at least 180 days) must be demonstrable at any time; historical log analysis must extend to a minimum of 5 years in the past; offline logs archived for regulatory/legal/audit/forensic use; BCP/DR planned with HA log collector in DC (primary site) and DR (secondary site, standby).
baselineUpon written request by the organization, Contractor shall provide a Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP) including business continuity plans, disaster recovery plans, emergency operations plan and procedures.
baselineThe bidder shall implement the DLP software in High Availability across the primary data center and disaster recovery site, configure a UAT instance for testing (with DR/UAT licenses factored into the commercial bid), and ensure the configuration is vetted by the OEM with written confirmation to the financial institution.
baselineThe on-site resource shall reconcile the count of endpoints with DLP agents at regular intervals and report; perform periodical backup restoration and participate in DR drill activities; and be responsible for DLP solution reconfiguration in the event of migration to cloud or hardware/software crash during the contract.
baselineIndicate your experience with major disruptions of your business and how they impacted your clients, including what contingencies your Firm has made to address potential disruptions to client services from a natural or man-made disaster or pandemic.
baselineUpon request, promptly provide copies of information security policies covering data classification, security training/awareness, systems administration/patching/configuration, application development/code review, incident response, disaster recovery/business continuity, data/system backup, and compliance with information security/privacy laws, regulations, or standards.
baselineWhat is your recovery point objective (RPO)? What is your recovery time objective (RTO)? Are your infrastructure components fully redundant?
baselineProvide additional information on any redundancy/fault tolerance included in the cost projections to maximize availability of the solution.
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Platform baseline
neutral · staff-reviewed
RFIDoes the platform cover business impact analysis (BIA), plan authoring, and live incident execution/coordination as one connected workflow, or is it primarily a document-repository for static plans with no live-incident tooling?Answer key — what a strong answer shows
Strong answers show BIA findings feeding directly into plan priorities and live-incident execution referencing the same plan, not three disconnected capabilities loosely bundled under one product name.
RFPDescribe how the platform keeps recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) current as the underlying systems/dependencies change, and quantify plan-staleness reduction with a customer reference.Answer key — what a strong answer shows
Plans that go stale as infrastructure changes are the most common real-world BCP failure; look for a concrete mechanism (dependency mapping, scheduled re-validation) and a customer-referenced staleness-reduction figure, not a generic claim.
RFIWhat tabletop-exercise and simulation capability is built in — guided scenario templates, participant tracking, after-action reporting — versus requiring the customer to run exercises entirely outside the tool with no feedback loop back into the plan?Answer key — what a strong answer shows
A closed loop (exercise findings automatically flag gaps in the plan) is materially stronger than a tool that only stores the plan document with no exercise/testing capability.
RFIHow does the platform map plan dependencies (which applications, vendors, and personnel each business process depends on), and is this dependency graph kept current automatically via integration or requires manual upkeep?Answer key — what a strong answer shows
Automated dependency mapping (via CMDB/asset-inventory integration) is stronger than manual spreadsheet-style upkeep, which reliably goes stale within a few quarters in practice.
RFPDetail live-incident activation capability — can the platform actually coordinate a real incident (notify the response team, track task completion against the plan, log a real-time timeline) versus being reference-only during an actual event.
From other buyers
crowdsourced · anonymized
💬
No buyer-contributed criteria yet
Verified buyers can suggest criteria (anonymized before pooling).
Answer key — what a strong answer shows
Look for genuine incident-coordination features (notifications, task tracking, timeline) used during a real event, not just a document viewer; ask for a customer reference of the tool being used live, not just planned around.
RFIWhat crisis communication capability exists — mass notification to employees/stakeholders across multiple channels (SMS, email, push, voice) — and what is the delivery confirmation/acknowledgment tracking for a real notification send?Answer key — what a strong answer shows
Multi-channel delivery with confirmed acknowledgment tracking (not just 'sent') matters most in an actual crisis when normal channels may be degraded; ask for real delivery-confirmation statistics from production use.
RFPExplain how the platform supports regulatory/audit requirements for business continuity (e.g., ISO 22301, financial-sector operational resilience rules) — pre-built compliance mapping and evidence export, or does the customer build this manually?Answer key — what a strong answer shows
Pre-built regulatory mapping with exportable evidence saves real audit effort; ask for a specific named framework the platform maps to rather than a generic 'compliance-ready' claim.
RFIHow does the platform handle third-party/vendor continuity risk — does it track whether critical vendors have their own adequate continuity plans, or does it stop at the customer's own internal processes?Answer key — what a strong answer shows
Third-party continuity risk is a common blind spot; a platform that extends visibility to critical vendor dependencies is more complete than one that only models internal processes.
RFIWhat is the pricing model — per plan/business unit, per user, or a flat enterprise tier — and how does cost scale as the organization's number of business processes and plans requiring coverage both grow?Answer key — what a strong answer shows
Look for transparent, predictable scaling economics; a vendor unable to project cost at meaningfully more plans/business units creates real budget risk for a growing organization.
RFPAfter a real disruption event and plan activation, does the platform support a structured post-incident review that captures what worked, what didn't, and automatically flags specific plan sections needing revision — closing the loop between real events and plan currency?Answer key — what a strong answer shows
A structured post-incident review that feeds directly back into plan revisions is a genuinely valuable closed-loop capability — ask for a concrete example, not just confirmation that live activation exists.
RFIDetail historical trend reporting on plan readiness/currency (percentage of plans reviewed within the required cycle, dependency-map staleness trend) over time, suitable for demonstrating program maturity to leadership and auditors.Answer key — what a strong answer shows
Trend-over-time readiness reporting is a distinct capability from individual plan documents — confirm this exists as a maintained, exportable report.
RFPWho within the organization gets access to completed BCP plans, and is there role-based access control given that a plan is essentially a documented map of the organization's critical dependencies and single points of failure?Answer key — what a strong answer shows
A BCP plan is uniquely sensitive — it explicitly documents where the organization is most vulnerable to disruption — role-based access control over this specific artifact is an often-overlooked consideration.
RFIHow does the platform integrate with the customer's existing incident-response/crisis-management tooling — is BCP activation a genuinely coordinated part of the same incident workflow, or a separate, disconnected process requiring manual handoff during an actual event?Answer key — what a strong answer shows
A disconnected BCP-activation process during a real, chaotic incident creates real coordination risk — ask for a specific answer on integration with the broader IR/crisis-management workflow.
RFIDoes the platform support genuinely consistent plan management across a large, multi-site or multi-region organization with different regional dependencies and regulatory requirements, or does each site/region require a separately-managed, disconnected plan?Answer key — what a strong answer shows
Genuine multi-site consistency (one platform, coordinated regional plans) is materially more useful for a distributed organization than disconnected, separately-managed plans per location.
RFPIs the platform accessible offline or via a mobile app during an actual disruption when normal corporate systems and network access may themselves be unavailable — what is the specific fallback-access mechanism?Answer key — what a strong answer shows
A BCP platform that's only accessible via normal corporate systems has a fundamental flaw — the very disruption it's meant to help manage could take down the systems needed to access it. Ask for a specific offline/mobile fallback mechanism.
RFIWhat international/multi-jurisdiction regulatory requirements does the platform support beyond ISO 22301 (e.g., region-specific financial-sector operational resilience rules, sector-specific continuity mandates), and is coverage genuinely global or concentrated in one region?Answer key — what a strong answer shows
Ask for an honest, specific answer on regulatory coverage breadth beyond the single most commonly-cited standard (ISO 22301) — a genuinely global organization needs broader regulatory mapping.
RFPEnsure that backup systems are monitored daily, and disaster recovery plans are practiced annually, including validating backup integrity and performing tests to confirm system reliability.
RFPDemonstrate how the technology increases system resilience in energy delivery control systems or components.
RFPBidder must ensure that DR setup is ready on the date of Go Live of the solution.
RFPBidder shall maintain following documentation and share the same during the contract; each batch job (if any) can, following a failure, be restarted, and bidder shall provide estimates of recovery time.
RFPMSSP to have an approved Business Continuity Plan to support the financial institution's group companies for continuity of SOC Operations, and must comply with all requirements in SEBI's Cyber Security and Cyber Resilience Framework (CSCRF) as per applicability, submitting a compliance certificate and audit report by a CERT-In empanelled vendor before onboarding and annually.
RFPStandard Operating Procedures (SOPs) shall be developed for all products/solutions/services provided including alert management, incident management, forensics, report management, log storage/archiving, SOC business continuity, operational documents, escalation matrix, change management, use cases, knowledge documents, and playbooks.
RFPLog Management/Storage: logs available for live correlation/analysis online for 3 months and offline for 6 months; restoration of historical logs (at least 180 days) must be demonstrable at any time; historical log analysis must extend to a minimum of 5 years in the past; offline logs archived for regulatory/legal/audit/forensic use; BCP/DR planned with HA log collector in DC (primary site) and DR (secondary site, standby).
RFPUpon written request by the organization, Contractor shall provide a Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP) including business continuity plans, disaster recovery plans, emergency operations plan and procedures.
RFPThe bidder shall implement the DLP software in High Availability across the primary data center and disaster recovery site, configure a UAT instance for testing (with DR/UAT licenses factored into the commercial bid), and ensure the configuration is vetted by the OEM with written confirmation to the financial institution.
RFPThe on-site resource shall reconcile the count of endpoints with DLP agents at regular intervals and report; perform periodical backup restoration and participate in DR drill activities; and be responsible for DLP solution reconfiguration in the event of migration to cloud or hardware/software crash during the contract.
RFPIndicate your experience with major disruptions of your business and how they impacted your clients, including what contingencies your Firm has made to address potential disruptions to client services from a natural or man-made disaster or pandemic.
RFPUpon request, promptly provide copies of information security policies covering data classification, security training/awareness, systems administration/patching/configuration, application development/code review, incident response, disaster recovery/business continuity, data/system backup, and compliance with information security/privacy laws, regulations, or standards.
RFPWhat is your recovery point objective (RPO)? What is your recovery time objective (RTO)? Are your infrastructure components fully redundant?
RFPProvide additional information on any redundancy/fault tolerance included in the cost projections to maximize availability of the solution.
