The Business continuity management system (BCMS) is a framework for identifying an organization's risk of exposure to internal and external threats and testing resilient treatments to overcome business challenges that will interrupt key business functions.

The goal of BCMS is to provide the organization with the ability to effectively respond to threats such as civil unrest, natural disasters or data breaches and protect the business interests of the organization. BCMS includes disaster recovery, business recovery, crisis management, incident management, emergency management and contingency planning.

Business continuity is the activity performed by an organization to ensure that critical business functions will be available to customers, suppliers, regulators, and other entities that must have access to those functions. These activities include many daily chores such as project management, system backups, change control, and help desk. Business Continuity refers to those activities performed daily to maintain service, consistency, and recoverability.