A crisis management team does not become operational the day an incident occurs. It is operational because its members have learned to make decisions with incomplete information, to coordinate stakeholders with differing priorities, and to maintain critical operations under pressure. Knowing how to build a crisis management team, therefore, means developing a sustainable collective capacity—not merely organizing a one-time awareness campaign.

For organizations subject to strict requirements regarding availability, compliance, or security, this training is part of business continuity governance. It must link crisis scenarios to the Business Continuity Plan (BCP), the Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP), cybersecurity measures, regulatory obligations, and communication mechanisms. The goal is not to establish standardized responses at all costs, but to enable rapid, justifiable decisions that are consistent with the organization’s priorities.

Start by defining the crisis management team’s mission

The first mistake is to form a team without clarifying its mandate. A crisis management team is neither a scaled-down executive committee nor a team dedicated solely to communications. Its role is to assess a deteriorating situation, set priorities, allocate resources, and steer the organization back to a controlled state.

The scope must be clearly defined: What events warrant its activation? Who can trigger it? What decisions can it make without additional approval? What thresholds require notification of senior management, authorities, customers, or partners? These answers determine the competencies to be developed and the expected level of autonomy.

In a cyber crisis, for example, the response team must be able to balance the need to isolate a system, ensure the continuity of a priority service, preserve evidence, and meet reporting obligations. In an industrial or logistics crisis, trade-offs may involve personal safety, site availability, supply chains, and contractual obligations. The methodological foundation is the same, but the scenarios, stakeholders, and critical decisions vary by sector.

How to Build a Crisis Management Team with Clear Roles

An effective team does not rely on bringing together all available experts. It relies on clearly defined roles, identified substitutes, and well-defined points of contact with operational teams. The number of participants must remain consistent with the decision-making process: a team that is too large slows down decision-making, while a team that is too small risks overlooking major impacts.

The following positions must be filled, with a clear distinction between the incumbent and the substitute:

• The crisis manager sets priorities, approves trade-offs, and escalates decisions to the appropriate level of governance.
• The crisis coordinator sets the pace of the meetings, maintains an overview of the situation, tracks actions, and ensures traceability.
• Business and technical leads assess the impacts, propose response options, and oversee implementation within their scope.
• The communications manager develops messages for employees, customers, partners, the media, and government agencies, in coordination with the legal and compliance departments.

Depending on the context, the involvement of information systems security, human resources, safety, legal, data protection, or regulatory affairs may be essential. However, these representatives should not be involved only during an annual exercise. They must be familiar with the activation procedures, decision-making processes, and constraints of other business units.

The training must also address the issue of absences. An organization that relies on a single person to manage a crisis has a governance vulnerability. Deputies must be trained to the same standard, have the necessary access, and participate in drills in active roles.

Train people in decision-making methods, not just procedures

Crisis management procedures are necessary, but they are not enough when the situation changes every fifteen minutes. Team members must master a decision-making discipline: distinguishing confirmed information from assumptions, assessing the consequences of a course of action, documenting trade-offs, and reevaluating decisions as the situation changes.

An operational training program must, in particular, teach participants how to establish a shared understanding of the situation. This requires providing precise answers to a few questions: What do we actually know? Which activities, people, data, or infrastructure are affected? What is the next irreversible deadline? What actions are being taken, by whom, and with what expected outcome?

The crisis log plays a vital role here. It records events, decisions, responsible parties, times of action, and evidence. It facilitates handoffs between teams, supports external communication, and serves as a key resource for lessons learned. Without this traceability, the response team risks confusing a collective perception with an objective assessment of the situation.

The training must also address decision-making biases. Confirmation bias, focusing on the technical incident at the expense of the business impact, or seeking immediate agreement can delay an appropriate response. The crisis manager must know how to request an alternative option, clarify the level of uncertainty, and make decisions even when not all data is available.

Reinforce skills through realistic exercises

A team does not prepare for a crisis by simply reading a plan. Drills turn procedures into collective reflexes and reveal the gaps between the theoretical plan and reality. They must be progressive: tabletop exercises, cell simulations, communication drills, and finally, scenarios involving response teams and key service providers.

Realism doesn’t necessarily mean a complex scenario. A well-designed scenario incorporates incomplete information, conflicting inputs, time constraints, and plausible external demands. An application outage, for example, might be accompanied by a rumor on social media, a call from a key client, and a request from a regulatory authority. The team must then demonstrate its ability to prioritize these issues rather than treat each one with equal importance.

The evaluation criteria must be known before the exercise begins. These may include response time, the quality of the initial assessment, the clarity of decisions, follow-up on actions, the consistency of messages, or escalation to higher levels of governance. Evaluating speed alone would be too narrow an approach: a decision that is made quickly but is poorly documented or inconsistent with the organization’s obligations can make the situation worse.

Feedback should be provided immediately after the event and again after analysis. Its purpose is not to assign blame to individuals, but to identify concrete areas for improvement: an outdated contact list, unclear decision-making authority, an underestimated dependence on a supplier, or an unworkable communication procedure. Each action must have an owner, a deadline, and a method for verification.

Linking Training to Business Continuity and Governance

Establishing a crisis response team separate from other resilience mechanisms creates predictable gaps. Members must understand continuity objectives, critical activities, maximum downtime thresholds, recovery strategies, and essential dependencies. Otherwise, the team risks making decisions that are technically sound but incompatible with business priorities.

This link is particularly critical in cyber crises. The response to an incident is not limited to containment and investigation. It must include service recovery, conditions for returning to production, relationships with suppliers, communication with stakeholders, and notification requirements. Coordination between crisis management, incident response, the Business Continuity Plan (BCP), and the Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) must therefore be tested, not merely described in separate documents.

Recognized standards, particularly ISO 22301, provide a useful framework for integrating this preparedness into a management system. They do not replace training, but they help structure responsibilities, competencies, exercises, performance evaluation, and continuous improvement. For a mature organization, training can thus be linked to internal control, audit, and compliance objectives.

Developing a Sustainable Training Program

The appropriate format depends on the organization’s maturity and its exposure to risks. A newly formed team will need a common foundation regarding activation procedures, roles, communication, and the conduct of crisis meetings. An experienced team will benefit more from sector-specific simulations, multi-site scenarios, or exercises involving senior management, service providers, and external stakeholders.

Training must be updated following a major transformation—such as a technology migration, merger, regulatory change, change in a critical service provider, or modification to the governance structure. It must also be incorporated into the onboarding process for new managers who may join the team. Crisis management skills that are neither maintained nor passed on quickly erode.

Finally, the professional development of stakeholders can be enhanced through structured training programs and certifications focused on business continuity and crisis management. DRI France supports this skill-building process with an approach based on recognized standards and their application in professional settings.

The value of a crisis management team is rarely apparent before an incident occurs. That is precisely why its preparedness deserves the same level of scrutiny as that applied to technical systems and compliance controls: explicit responsibilities, proven skills, and decisions that have been practiced before they become critical.

A production line shutdown is never merely a loss of hourly capacity. It can disrupt supply chains, jeopardize contractual commitments, create quality risks, put employees at risk, and have a lasting impact on customer confidence. Operational continuity addresses this challenge: maintaining—even at reduced capacity when necessary—or restoring, within a controlled timeframe, essential production activities, utilities, and support functions.

In industrial environments, business continuity cannot rely on a theoretical plan that is shelved after an audit. It must incorporate the physical, technical, human, and digital interdependencies that connect a site to its suppliers, customers, service providers, and information systems. Its effectiveness depends as much on the quality of governance as on the teams’ ability to implement decisions made under pressure.

What Business Continuity Covers

Industrial continuity is a component of business continuity, applied to the specific realities of production operations. It aims to protect the processes involved in manufacturing, packaging, storing, shipping, or maintaining an industrial product or service. It also covers the resources without which these processes cannot function: energy, water, compressed air, control and command systems, maintenance, key skills, raw materials, and logistics capabilities.

It should not be confused with preventive maintenance alone, nor with an IT disaster recovery plan. Maintenance reduces the likelihood of certain failures. The disaster recovery plan addresses the restoration of technology and data. Business continuity planning organizes a broader response: which activities to prioritize, with what minimum resources, according to what safety and quality thresholds, and under whose decision-making authority.

This distinction is crucial when an incident is complex. A cyberattack can render an industrial control system unavailable without damaging the machinery. A supply disruption can leave the production line operational but prevent the manufacture of a critical product. A localized incident may require the temporary transfer of operations to another site. In each of these cases, simply restoring technical operations is not enough to ensure a controlled recovery.

Identify the truly critical activities

The starting point is a business impact analysis, typically conducted with managers from production, maintenance, quality, supply chain, IT, security, and executive management. The goal is not to designate the entire plant as critical. Such an approach would make it impossible to set priorities in the event of a crisis.

The analysis should identify, for each process, the consequences of a disruption based on its duration. Criteria may include delivery obligations, regulatory requirements, HSE risks, financial losses, product integrity, component availability, contractual penalties, and reputational impact. A maximum acceptable downtime and a minimum level of operation to be maintained must then be defined.

In a manufacturing facility, these decisions often reveal dependencies that are not immediately apparent. A production line may be a priority, but it may depend on a quality control laboratory, a cold storage room, a temperature-controlled transportation provider, or an older automated system that would take several weeks to replace. Mapping must therefore extend beyond the production floor and examine dependencies both upstream and downstream.

The level of precision depends on the criticality of the site. For a high-risk facility, a pharmaceutical site, or an operation subject to strict oversight, traceability, qualification, and validation requirements can significantly limit the options for degraded operation. Conversely, certain production runs can be rescheduled provided that capacity, equipment, and personnel are available at another site.

Developing Realistic Business Continuity Strategies

A credible business continuity strategy translates the results of the impact analysis into concrete capabilities. It does not involve simply multiplying backup solutions without making trade-offs. Each measure has a cost, maintenance requirements, and sometimes its own vulnerabilities. The appropriate level of preparedness depends on acceptable impacts, the probability of scenarios, and the organization’s obligations.

Redundancy for critical equipment may be appropriate when a failure would cause an immediate production shutdown and no external solution is available. However, a second machine does not solve a shortage of qualified personnel, a widespread power outage, or an incident affecting both pieces of equipment simultaneously. It may be more effective to maintain a stock of critical parts, contract for external production capacity, establish an alternative manufacturing process, or train multiple operators in a rare skill.

Strategies must also address degraded operations. Possible options include producing at a reduced rate, prioritizing certain products, temporarily streamlining documentation workflows, implementing enhanced controls, or postponing non-essential activities. However, these options must be approved in advance by the quality, safety, compliance, and finance departments. A solution that maintains volume but compromises traceability or safety requirements is not an acceptable response.

Supplier management is another sensitive issue. Simply knowing who your strategic suppliers are is not enough. The organization must assess replacement lead times, available inventory, geographic concentration, reliance on a single subcontractor, and communication protocols during times of stress. In some industries, dual sourcing provides real flexibility. In others, qualifying a second source is a lengthy and costly process; in such cases, business continuity relies more heavily on safety stock, contractual commitments, and information sharing with the supplier.

Coordinating Production, Cybersecurity, and Crisis Management

The convergence of information systems and operational technologies has changed the scope of industrial risk. PLCs, supervisory control systems, production networks, maintenance tools, and interfaces with the ERP system all play a direct role in production capacity. A cyber incident can therefore become a business continuity incident, even when business data remains available.

The response must balance two sometimes conflicting imperatives: quickly restoring operations and not compromising the safety or integrity of the facilities. Restarting an OT environment without first verifying its status can exacerbate the incident. Conversely, waiting for a complete restoration of all services can unnecessarily prolong the outage. Clear procedures must define who authorizes a shutdown, a switchover, a phased recovery, or a return to normal operation.

This coordination requires clear governance. The crisis response team does not replace the technical teams, but it sets priorities, assesses impacts, and coordinates communication with stakeholders. Production managers provide the operational perspective; the IT and Information Security departments assess the conditions for resuming operations; the Quality department oversees product requirements; and senior management decides on acceptable compromises. Without formalized roles, critical decisions become slower and more open to challenge.

Testing business continuity under realistic conditions

An untested plan remains a hypothesis. Testing must verify not only the existence of procedures, but also their ability to produce a result within the expected timeframe. It is helpful to begin with tabletop exercises to examine decision-making processes, points of contact, escalation criteria, and communications. Targeted technical exercises can then test the restoration of a monitoring system, the use of a spare part, or the transfer of an operation.

The most instructive exercises combine several functions and introduce realistic constraints: unavailability of a supplier, absence of a key decision-maker, poor communication, conflicting information, or pressure from clients. Their purpose is not to cause participants to fail. Rather, the goal is to identify discrepancies between the planned process and operational reality, and then to correct them according to a monitored improvement plan.

The metrics must reflect this approach. The number of plans drafted is not particularly revealing. It is more useful to track the coverage of critical activities, the updating of contacts and dependencies, the completion rate of drills, the turnaround time for corrective actions, and the achievement of recovery objectives. This documentation discipline is also valuable for demonstrating the maturity of the system to auditors, clients, or regulatory authorities.

Making Competence a Factor in Resilience

Business continuity draws on a wide range of expertise, but it requires a common language and a shared approach. Business continuity planners, site managers, risk teams, cybersecurity teams, and crisis managers must be able to integrate impact analysis, recovery strategies, plans, drills, and continuous improvement within a coherent framework, particularly in accordance with ISO 22301.

Training and certification provide this framework. They enable the transition from local initiatives—often led by a few experienced individuals—to a structured, measurable, and transferable system. The programs offered by DRI France are specifically designed to translate business continuity principles into practical applications within French and French-speaking organizations.

Business continuity is established before an incident occurs, but its effectiveness is judged when room for maneuver becomes limited. An organization that understands its priorities, dependencies, and contingency plans can act methodically, even when production conditions are no longer optimal.

A major incident does not merely put a plan to the test. It puts decisions, trade-offs, and the ability to coordinate stakeholders—who may have conflicting priorities—to the test. The question of “who leads business continuity” cannot, therefore, be resolved simply by designating a single document owner. It requires establishing a governance framework capable of maintaining critical operations, protecting stakeholders, and restoring control over the situation.

In a mature organization, business continuity management relies on clearly assigned responsibilities, supported by senior management and carried out across business units, IT, cybersecurity, support functions, and crisis management. The business continuity manager is often at the center of the system, but he or she cannot assess impacts alone, decide on recovery priorities alone, or guarantee the effectiveness of continuity solutions alone.

Who is responsible for business continuity within the organization?

Operational management is generally the responsibility of a business continuity manager, sometimes referred to as a BCM, business continuity manager, or operational resilience manager. Their role is to design, implement, maintain, and improve the business continuity management system. They lead the work, organize the documentation, arrange impact analyses, coordinate drills, and monitor action plans.

However, this role should not be confused with absolute responsibility for business continuity. The Business Continuity Manager ensures the consistency of the system and its proper functioning over the long term. Business unit managers retain ownership of their operations, critical resources, recovery requirements, and the solutions they approve. Senior management, for its part, makes governance decisions and accepts the levels of residual risk.

This division of responsibilities is critical. A PCA developed exclusively by a central function risks remaining theoretical if it is not adopted by the business units. Conversely, plans developed separately by each entity may become inconsistent, difficult to test, and impossible to manage at the group level. The central function must therefore strike a balance between standardization, decentralization, and operational requirements.

The PCA Manager, the leader of the initiative

The CCO manages the business continuity lifecycle. He or she defines a methodology consistent with the organization’s governance framework, leads the business impact analysis (BIA), consolidates critical dependencies, and ensures alignment between business objectives and actual recovery capabilities.

He also prepares governance bodies, monitors maturity indicators, coordinates testing campaigns, and issues alerts when deviations jeopardize defined objectives. In regulated environments, they help demonstrate that the system is documented, maintained, and monitored. Their work involves less drafting procedures and more ensuring that business continuity decisions are implemented even under pressure.

The role’s organizational placement varies depending on the size and sector of the organization. It may report to the risk management, security, operations management, compliance, or—more rarely—the IT department. No single reporting structure is universally preferable. The right choice depends on the company’s culture, its risk model, and the priority given to digital issues. The key is to maintain access to decision-makers and the ability to engage business units.

Management bears the responsibility for governance

Business continuity is a governance issue before it is a technical one. Management must define the program’s objectives, prioritize the necessary investments, and ensure that critical operations have continuity capabilities commensurate with their risks.

Specifically, it approves the business continuity policy, priority areas, recovery time objectives, and crisis scenarios to be addressed. It also steps in when decisions go beyond the scope of a single business unit or department—for example, when a contingency plan requires cross-functional investments or a reassessment of customer priorities.

Without visible sponsorship, the PCA can easily become a mere formality. Exercises are postponed, corrective actions remain pending, and business unit managers do not set aside the necessary time. Conversely, active governance transforms business continuity into a decision-making mechanism: it sheds light on dependencies, vulnerabilities, and acceptable resilience choices.

Business Functions, IT, and Crisis Management: Complementary Responsibilities

Business continuity relies on a chain of responsibility. Business units identify what needs to be maintained or resumed, in what order, and with what minimum resources. They define the impacts of an interruption on customers, contractual obligations, compliance, personal safety, reputation, and financial results.

The IT department and cybersecurity teams provide the technical resources necessary to restore digital services. They identify application dependencies, recovery objectives, backup capabilities, restoration procedures, and the risks associated with a cyberattack. However, an IT recovery plan alone does not ensure the continuity of business operations. Restoring an application does not guarantee that teams, sites, suppliers, or alternative procedures will be available.

The crisis response team steps in when an event requires coordinated action and exceptional decisions. It manages the situation, communication, escalation, and immediate trade-offs. The business continuity plan, on the other hand, provides the information and strategies that enable crisis teams to make decisions based on a prepared framework. The two disciplines are closely linked, but their objectives differ: crisis management steers the event, while business continuity organizes the continuation or resumption of operations.

The procurement, human resources, legal, communications, and security departments must also be involved when their input is critical. Reliance on a service provider, the unavailability of a site, a prolonged absence of staff, or a notification requirement can profoundly alter a business continuity strategy. Ignoring these factors during the analysis phase means discovering predictable points of failure too late.

Building a Governance Structure That Actually Works

Effective governance relies on formalized responsibilities, clearly defined bodies, and a management cycle tailored to the risks involved. It is helpful to distinguish between strategic governance—which approves policy and investments—and operational governance—which monitors deployment, testing, and corrective actions.

The accountability matrix must be sufficiently precise to avoid gray areas. In particular, it specifies who approves impact analyses, who authorizes deviations from recovery targets, who decides to activate a plan, and who reports on the system’s performance. This clarification is particularly important in international groups, matrix organizations, and structures where IT is heavily outsourced.

Indicators should not be limited to the number of plans available. A system may appear comprehensive on paper yet be unable to withstand an actual crisis. It is more meaningful to track, for example, the coverage of critical activities, the testing rate, the quality of feedback, the time required to complete corrective actions, and trends in uncontrolled dependencies.

Test responsibilities, not just procedures

A useful business continuity exercise first verifies people’s ability to perform their roles. Who assesses the incident? Who convenes the crisis response team? Who decides to switch to a degraded operating mode? Who notifies customers or the relevant authorities? Who authorizes a return to normal operations?

Table-top exercises allow organizations to test decisions and cross-team coordination. Technical tests verify recovery procedures. More comprehensive simulations challenge the organization with incomplete information, simultaneous outages, and realistic time pressures. The level of ambition must be commensurate with the criticality of the situation, but the absence of testing does not allow one to conclude that a plan is effective.

Every exercise must yield actionable insights. The goal is not to prove that the plan exists, but to identify what is holding things up: a decision that hasn’t been assigned, unavailable information, an overlooked supplier dependency, or an unrealistic recovery objective. The value of the test is measured by the quality of the improvements that are actually implemented.

What Skills Are Needed to Manage Business Continuity?

The business continuity manager must be proficient in BIA, risk analysis, business continuity strategy, planning, and testing. He or she must also understand IT architectures, cybersecurity issues, and crisis management mechanisms, without necessarily replacing specialists in these fields.

His interpersonal skills are just as important. He must be able to facilitate workshops with executives, operational staff, and technical experts; challenge assumptions that are sometimes overly optimistic; and translate complex requirements into concrete decisions. This credibility is built through practical experience, but also through structured training based on recognized standards such as ISO 22301.

Certification provides a common framework, which is particularly useful when the Business Continuity Manager needs to interact with auditors, demanding clients, or teams based in multiple countries. The training programs offered by DRI France are specifically designed to professionalize these roles and transform business continuity principles into practical, immediately applicable skills.

A good pilot, therefore, is not someone who has all the answers on their own. It is someone who makes the right decisions at the right level before an incident limits the available options. Giving this role a clear mandate, recognized authority, and active governance is often the first truly effective measure to ensure continuity.

A DORA course should not be judged by the number of slides it contains or by knowledge of the regulations alone. A meaningful evaluation of a DORA course must determine whether the program truly enables professionals to translate digital operational resilience requirements into governance decisions, controls, procedures, and evidence that can be presented to regulators.

Since the European DORA regulation took effect on January 17, 2025, affected financial institutions and their technology partners must demonstrate a higher level of control over risks related to information and communication technologies. For a Business Continuity Manager (BCM), Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), risk manager, compliance officer, or resilience lead, choosing the right training program therefore means looking beyond a course that merely promises “DORA awareness.” The right training path must be tailored to your role, your organization’s maturity level, and the obligations that actually apply to your organization.

1. Verify the scope of the regulations covered

The first criterion involves examining how the training program presents the scope of DORA. A useful course should explain which financial institutions are affected, how responsibilities are divided among business units, control functions, and the IT department, as well as the specific role of third-party IT service providers.

It must also avoid two pitfalls. The first is treating DORA as a purely cybersecurity issue. The regulation does indeed cover ICT risk management, but it also addresses governance, incident management and reporting, resilience testing, third-party oversight, and information-sharing mechanisms. The second pitfall is assuming that all organizations must apply the same measures with the same intensity. Proportionality remains a fundamental principle.

High-quality training also clarifies the connections to the policies and procedures already in place within the organization: regulatory requirements, data protection, information system security, business continuity, supplier risk management, and crisis plans. This alignment is essential to avoid creating an isolated DORA program that is difficult to govern and maintain.

2. Assess the program’s operational depth

A program may mention the main pillars of DORA without providing the means to implement them. The evaluation of a DORA course must therefore focus on the level of detail provided regarding operational practices. Participants must understand not only what is expected of them, but also how to organize their work and what evidence to retain.

For ICT risk management, this involves, for example, linking the inventory of critical assets and services, dependency analysis, failure scenarios, security measures, and escalation mechanisms. For incidents, the course must clarify the categorization, classification, internal coordination, notification deadlines, and preparation of the necessary information for the relevant authorities.

The section on third parties warrants special attention. A thorough training program addresses pre-contractual requirements, vendor oversight, contractual clauses, exit strategies, and concentration risks. This topic directly concerns organizations that rely on the cloud, managed services, payment platforms, or critical vendors. It cannot be reduced to a simple annual review of contracts.

3. Examine the emphasis placed on exercises and use cases

An understanding of regulations is a prerequisite, but it does not guarantee the ability to respond during a major incident. The best training scenarios expose participants to situations that closely mirror their real-world experiences: the unavailability of a critical service, a compromised service provider, loss of data integrity, a connectivity outage, or an incident that could trigger a notification.

Exercises should lead to decision-making. Who assesses the incident? At what point is management notified? How do we coordinate the crisis response team, security, business continuity, and compliance? Which information is reliable, which still needs to be confirmed, and how should decisions be documented? These questions highlight the gaps between a formal policy and the actual ability to respond.

However, the format depends on the specific need. A senior executive will benefit more from a case study focused on governance, the accountability of governing bodies, and prioritization decisions. An operations manager, on the other hand, will need more detailed workshops on records, procedures, metrics, and testing. A one-size-fits-all training program does not provide the same value to all roles.

4. Verify the expertise and current status of the speakers

DORA operates in a complex environment comprising regulations, technical standards, supervisory expectations, and industry practices. The presenter must not only have a thorough understanding of this framework but also know how to make it understandable to teams that are already dealing with the constraints of ISO 22301, cybersecurity, risk management, and internal controls.

Real-world experience makes a tangible difference. A trainer who can explain the challenges of governance, mapping dependencies, or establishing contractual agreements provides insights that simply reading a regulatory text cannot. Their role is not to promise automatic compliance, but to help participants develop an approach that is defensible, traceable, and tailored to their specific context.

During the selection process, it is important to verify the date the materials were last updated, the quality of the references cited, and the trainer’s ability to address complex cases. Answers that are too general regarding third parties, incidents, or tests often indicate a training program that is more introductory than practical.

5. Measure outcomes, not just satisfaction

Satisfaction surveys are useful for evaluating the presentation style, pace, or clarity of the training materials. They are not sufficient on their own to validate skill development. A DORA training course must include an assessment of learning outcomes that is consistent with its objectives: knowledge quizzes, scenario analysis, case studies, incident classification exercises, or the development of an action plan.

The assessment should measure the ability to reason, not the memorization of regulatory terms. A competent participant must be able to identify the relevant functions, link a requirement to an existing process, assess a gap, and propose a prioritized course of action. In a regulated environment, this ability to apply knowledge is often more useful than a comprehensive recitation of the regulation’s provisions.

When a certification or exam is offered, it is important to distinguish between the validation of knowledge and the professional recognition sought. The exam provides a formal benchmark, but its value depends on the standards, the level of difficulty, the assessment methods, and the program’s recognition in the job market.

6. Assess the applicability within your organization

The key question is simple: What will you be able to do differently after completing the training? A good course should enable participants to leave with a framework for evaluating their current system and actionable steps they can implement immediately. This could involve DORA governance, the ICT third-party registry, improving an incident management process, or preparing a testing program.

This applicability also depends on the documents provided. Templates, examples of deliverables, and analysis matrices can help speed up the transition to action, provided they are not used as rigid templates. Each organization has its own architecture, service providers, lines of defense, critical services, and resource constraints.

In-house training may be preferable when multiple teams need to develop a common language and address specific interdependencies. An open-enrollment session, on the other hand, provides valuable perspective on industry practices and the challenges faced by other organizations. The choice depends on the maturity of the program and the level of confidentiality required for the topics to be covered.

7. Integrate training into a skills development path

DORA does not fall under a single area of responsibility. Its implementation involves business continuity, cybersecurity, risk management, compliance, procurement, legal affairs, and supplier management. The evaluation of a course must therefore take into account its place within a broader professional development pathway.

For certain roles, a module focused on DORA will address an immediate need for regulatory awareness. For others—particularly those responsible for implementing or auditing the framework—a training program combining operational resilience, crisis management, business continuity, and recognized standards will be more relevant. The skills acquired must remain useful beyond the compliance timeline.

DRI France incorporates this approach into training programs designed to structure resilience practices and strengthen implementation capabilities within organizations. The goal is not to accumulate certificates, but to build a function capable of coordinating stakeholders, objectively identifying gaps, and sustainably improving the level of preparedness.

When selecting a DORA course, therefore, choose one that will enable you to formulate—as soon as you return to your organization—three concrete decisions: what needs to be verified, which managers to involve, and the first piece of evidence of compliance to produce. It is at this stage that the training becomes a driver of resilience rather than merely a regulatory compliance measure.

A Disaster Recovery (DR) manager does more than just document recovery procedures. He or she must align business requirements, technological dependencies, crisis scenarios, recovery objectives, and continuity governance. The question “What certification is required for a disaster recovery manager?” therefore deserves a more precise answer than simply the name of a degree: the right certification depends on the actual scope of the role, the level of responsibility involved, and the maturity of the organization.

In regulated or highly digitized environments, the Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) rarely stands alone. It is a component of business continuity planning, cybersecurity, supplier management, and crisis management. A relevant certification should enable professionals to structure these interconnections, not just to master a backup or replication solution.

What certification is required for a PRA manager based on their responsibilities?

The first criterion is the nature of the role. A business continuity manager focused on IT infrastructure, disaster recovery architectures, data recovery, and technical exercises will not have exactly the same needs as a business continuity manager responsible for coordinating business units, risk management, the IT department, and critical service providers.

For a comprehensive scope of responsibility, professional certifications in business continuity generally provide the most coherent foundation. They cover business impact analysis, continuity and recovery strategies, incident management, plans, drills, maintenance, and governance. This scope reflects the reality of a business continuity plan (BCP) designed to support critical business operations, rather than a vision limited solely to IT components.

The career paths associated with DRI International—including the ABCP, CBCP, and MBCP levels—are designed to support professional advancement. They distinguish between an initial validation of knowledge, a certification for practitioners who design and deploy systems, and a level tailored to experienced professionals in management and leadership roles. The choice of level should be based on demonstrable experience and current responsibilities, not solely on seniority.

Conversely, a technical certification may be a priority when the position focuses primarily on a specific technology: backup, storage, cloud, virtualization, networking, identity management, or disaster recovery platforms. It provides valuable expertise for building and operating disaster recovery systems. However, it does not replace business continuity expertise when the manager must balance business priorities, set recovery objectives, or report to a governance body.

The PRA must be aligned with business continuity objectives

A credible disaster recovery plan (DRP) is not judged solely by the existence of a backup site or the success of a single recovery operation. It must address operational questions: Which activities must resume first? Within what timeframe? With what acceptable level of data? What human, application, facility, and supplier dependencies affect the recovery process? Who decides when to switch to degraded mode or return to normal operations?

That is why certification based on business continuity practices offers particular value to the disaster recovery manager. It provides a method for translating business needs into recovery objectives and then verifying that technical solutions actually meet those objectives. It also helps avoid a common mistake: confusing theoretical recovery capacity with actual operational recovery capacity.

The ISO 22301 standard is central to this approach. It structures a business continuity management system around policy, leadership, analysis, planning, support, operations, evaluation, and continuous improvement. For a business continuity manager, understanding this framework makes it possible to integrate the recovery plan into a sustainable governance structure, complete with documentation, defined responsibilities, and regular drills.

However, it is important to distinguish between the certification of an individual and the certification of an organization. ISO 22301 can serve as a framework for a management system certified at the company level. Lead implementer or lead auditor training courses, on the other hand, develop skills for implementing or auditing the standard. These courses are highly relevant for managers involved in a compliance project, an internal control system, or audits. However, on their own, they do not always meet the need for professional development specific to a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) manager.

An ISO certification, an industry-specific certification, or both?

The right choice depends on your professional goals. A business continuity certification is recommended when you need to design, coordinate, test, and improve a business continuity plan (BCP) or disaster recovery plan (DRP) over the long term. An ISO 22301-focused qualification usefully complements this foundation when the organization aims to align with the standard, is preparing for certification of its management system, or expects the manager to contribute to audits.

In many cases, combining both approaches is the most effective strategy. The first provides operational methods for business continuity and disaster recovery. The second strengthens the ability to integrate these practices into a framework of management, compliance, and continuous improvement. However, pursuing both paths is not automatically necessary for a professional whose scope of work remains highly technical or whose organization already has a separate business continuity function.

Determine the appropriate certification level

Before applying, it is helpful to evaluate the position based on four factors: the scope of responsibilities, the level of autonomy, interaction with stakeholders, and governance responsibilities.

• A professional early in their career who contributes to analysis, documentation, or exercises may seek certification that validates their understanding of the fundamentals of business continuity.
• An operations manager who oversees a disaster recovery plan, conducts impact analyses, coordinates tests, and updates plans would be well advised to aim for a recognized professional certification.
• A manager responsible for business continuity policy, a multi-entity program, critical service providers, or communication with senior leadership should prioritize a certification level that reflects this broader scope of responsibility.
• A consultant or auditor can supplement their professional certification with a specialization in ISO 22301 implementation or auditing, depending on their assignments.

Eligibility requirements must be carefully reviewed. Some professional certifications are based not only on an exam but also on proof of relevant experience and achievements. This requirement is a measure of credibility: it distinguishes the acquisition of knowledge from the recognition of proven professional practice.

The criteria that determine the value of a certification

The reputation of a degree program alone is not enough. When selecting a certification, it is important to consider the recognition of the certification standards, its international scope, the assessment methods, the alignment of the program with the job’s responsibilities, and the ability to maintain those skills over time.

The practical aspect is crucial. A PRA manager must be able to apply what they’ve learned from the training to develop an impact analysis, define consistent RTO and RPO objectives, formalize strategies, organize an exercise, analyze gaps, and present well-supported decisions to the governance body. Training that is too theoretical may provide a common vocabulary without offering the tools needed to move the program forward.

Adapting to the French context is also important. Professionals must navigate sector-specific requirements, relationships with regulatory authorities, contractual constraints, multi-site organizations, and established crisis management systems. A program delivered in French, while drawing on international standards, facilitates understanding and implementation within the company.

DRI France supports this professional development through training and certification programs focused on business continuity, organizational resilience, and the operational implementation of recognized standards.

Don’t limit the PRA to IT recovery

Cyber resilience has strengthened the role of the Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP), particularly in the face of ransomware, identity compromise, the unavailability of a cloud provider, or the logical destruction of data. In these scenarios, recovery is not simply a matter of bringing a system back online. It is necessary to assess the incident, preserve evidence, restore operations in a trusted environment, prioritize critical processes, and coordinate decisions with the crisis response team.

A Business Continuity Manager certification must therefore develop the ability to work with the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), cybersecurity teams, business units, procurement, legal counsel, and senior management. Certifications in cybersecurity, crisis management, or risk management can enhance this profile. These certifications are complementary: they provide specialization, while business continuity offers the framework that links prevention, response, recovery, and lessons learned.

The most appropriate choice is the one that immediately enhances the manager’s ability to turn a plan into a proven system. When a major incident occurs, the value of the certification is measured less by its title than by the quality of the decisions, drills, and recovery efforts it has helped to prepare.