Components of the ICT business continuity plan
Article 39
1. The financial entities referred to in Article 16(1) of Regulation (EU) 2022/2554 shall develop their ICT business continuity plans considering the results of the analysis of their exposures to and potential impact of severe business disruptions and scenarios to which their ICT assets supporting critical or important functions might be exposed, including a cyber-attack scenario. 2. The ICT business continuity plans referred to in paragraph 1 shall: (a) be approved by the management body of the financial entity; (b) be documented and readily accessible in the event of an emergency or crisis; (c) allocate sufficient resources for their execution; (d) establish planned recovery levels and timeframes for the recovery and resumption of functions and key internal and external dependencies, including ICT third-party service providers; (e) identify the conditions that may prompt the activation of the ICT business continuity plans and what actions are to be taken to ensure the availability, continuity, and recovery of the financial entities’ ICT assets supporting critical or important functions; (f) identify the restoration and recovery measures for critical or important business functions, supporting processes, information assets, and their interdependencies to avoid adverse effects on the functioning of the financial entities; (g) identify backup procedures and measures that specify the scope of the data that are subject to the backup, and the minimum frequency of the backup, based on the criticality of the function using those data; (h) consider alternative options where recovery may not be feasible in the short term because of costs, risks, logistics, or unforeseen circumstances; (i) specify the internal and external communication arrangements, including escalation plans; (j) be updated in line with lessons learned from incidents, tests, new risks, and threats identified, changed recovery objectives, major changes to the financial entity’s organisation, and to the ICT assets supporting critical or business functions. For the purposes of point (f), the measures referred to in that point shall provide for the mitigation of failures of critical third-party providers.