Incidents & continuity
A plan for keeping the most important work going during and after a crisis, even while the systems are down.
Formal
A documented set of procedures that keeps critical activities running at an agreed minimum level during a disruption, falling back on manual routines where needed, in the order of priority set by the business impact analysis.
In plain English
Like a shop that keeps selling with a paper notebook and cash when the card terminal dies.
In practice
When an attack takes a municipality's systems down for a week, its care homes follow the BCP - medicine charts on paper, phone lists printed in advance and meal orders phoned through to the central kitchen.
Why it matters
Citizens and patients still need help while IT is being repaired; without an agreed plan B, staff improvise and the most urgent tasks may be the ones that stop.