Business continuity may be defined as "the capability of an organization to continue the delivery of products or services at pre-defined acceptable levels following a disruptive incident", and business continuity planning (or business continuity and resiliency planning) is the process of creating systems of prevention and recovery to deal with potential threats to a company. In addition to prevention, the goal is to enable ongoing operations before and during execution of disaster recovery. Business continuity is the intended outcome of proper execution of both business continuity planning and disaster recovery.

Several business continuity standards have been published by various standards bodies to assist in checklisting ongoing planning tasks.

Business continuity requires a top-down approach to identify an organisation's minimum requirements to ensure its viability as an entity. An organization's resistance to failure is "the ability ... to withstand changes in its environment and still function". Often called resilience, resistance to failure is a capability that enables organizations to either endure environmental changes without having to permanently adapt, or the organization is forced to adapt a new way of working that better suits the new environmental conditions.

Any event that could negatively impact operations should be included in the plan, such as supply chain interruption, loss of or damage to critical infrastructure (major machinery or computing/network resource). As such, BCP is a subset of risk management. In the U.S., government entities refer to the process as continuity of operations planning (COOP). A business continuity plan outlines a range of disaster scenarios and the steps the business will take in any particular scenario to return to regular trade. BCP's are written ahead of time and can also include precautions to be put in place. Usually created with the input of key staff as well as stakeholders, a BCP is a set of contingencies to minimize potential harm to businesses during adverse scenarios.

A 2005 analysis of how disruptions can adversely affect the operations of corporations and how investments in resilience can give a competitive advantage over entities not prepared for various contingencies extended then-common business continuity planning practices. Business organizations such as the Council on Competitiveness embraced this resilience goal.

Adapting to change in an apparently slower, more evolutionary manner - sometimes over many years or decades - has been described as being more resilient, and the term "strategic resilience" is now used to go beyond resisting a one-time crisis, but rather continuously anticipating and adjusting, "before the case for change becomes desperately obvious".

This approach is sometimes summarized as: preparedness, protection, response and recovery.

Resilience Theory can be related to the field of Public Relations. Resilience is a communicative process that is constructed by citizens, families, media system, organizations and governments through everyday talk and mediated conversation.