International Journal of Business and Social Science Vol. 2 No. 18; October 2011 183 Business Disaster Preparedness: An Empirical Study for measuring the Factors of Business Continuity to face Business Disaster Akram Jalal Karim Management Information System Department College of Business and Finance, Ahlia University P.O. Box 10878 1st Floor Gosi Complex Exhibitions Road, Manama Kingdom of Bahrain Abstract At present, the expansion in using data management technologies, globalization, and rapid communication offer organizations an unprecedented set of possibilities for evolution. On the other hand there are several vulnerabilities to threats and disasters. In this context, a realistic business goal is to guarantee the continuity of the processes in the case of disasters or crises. Business preparedness, through implementing Business Continuity Planning (BCP), decreases or eliminates the disruption to employees and profitability and allows businesses to perform balanced tasks in community. This research presents a conceptual design for measuring the factors of BCP on business disaster preparedness through the use of statistical indicators. Such research is required to develop systematic knowledge on how importance it is for businesses to persist with BCP to recover from disasters. The paper concludes that there is a significant effect of Strategic Management, Business Risk Analysis, Training and Awareness, and Information Life Cycle Managements when making BCP a cornerstone for the successful preparedness to any disaster. Keywords: Business continuity, disaster recovery, disaster preparedness, risk management. 1. Introduction During the last twenty years, organizations of all sizes have been sustained by their information systems and their expenditures were heavily based on their intensifying Information Technology infrastructures. This assisted them to computerize, manipulate, and analyze their business operations and long/short term strategies in a highly professional way. It is difficult to envision contemporary businesses devoid of advanced information systems covering their daily operations such as online trading, airline reservations, financial databases, etc. Business managers identify that a disaster can occur as a result of various causes, depending on a range of challenges such as environmental, economical and political, such as power outages, virus eruptions, disruptions, data fraud, terrorist attacks and the like. All of these may put off organizations from exercising their right to use the data and systems they need for managing their businesses. A business impact analysis (BIA) can expose the accurate detriments of disaster and the consequence disruptions in a specific business. However, these kinds of analysis are costly, and many senior managers are disinclined to financially support based on a BIA analysis without an accurate evaluation to the exact value or to the return on investment (ROI). Disaster Recovery Planning (DRP) is a description of how a business reacts to any internal or external event to assure that critical business operations should carry on without any barriers. The aim of DRP is to reduce the consequences of a disaster and perform the proper actions to defend valuable resources. On the other hand, Business Continuity Planning (BCP) illustrates the methods and procedures that have been used by business to guarantee that important functions should carry on in and after a disaster. It is the facility of sustaining the continuous availability of significant systems, applications, and information of the business. BCP corresponds to the reaction of the required business understanding to the undesirable events. This process should be accomplished for the enterprise wide functions to reduce financial loss, enhance customer‘s service and alleviate the destructive events that may affect on name, processes, liquidity and market reputation. As a result, disaster recovery, which focuses on IT activities, is possibly more common, however it is in fact a subset of the wider theme of business continuity. Although disaster recovery is a reaction to unusual events which removes all the mess subsequently so the business can continue as formal, business continuity is highly proactive plan, it carry on actions to guarantee that regardless of what occurs, business operations continue as stable as possible.