Applicable methodologies for business continuity management in IT services: A systematic literature review

Introduction: currently, information technologies have one characteristic in common: their volatility. This is why it is important that companies have methodologies that allow adequate management of the continuity of the services offered through them. Objective: in this sense, the purpose of this systematic literature review is to identify the most appropriate methodologies that can be implemented in companies to deal with these unforeseen interruptions. Method: with a study based on a PICO question, the search for relevant literature in a scientific database was proposed using a search equation based on keywords. Results: the studies offer qualitative results that mainly allow reducing response times before incidents of unforeseen interruptions, among the most notable is that the proposed systems help increase the success rate of recovery procedures by 80 %, allow identifying and apply integration technologies that allow improving business continuity systems, among others. However, there is a knowledge gap for which the implementation of these methods is suggested for future proposals in order to achieve quantitative results that can be presented through metrics. Conclusions: in conclusion, the present systematic literature review carried out the analysis and a comparison of the methodologies proposed by the authors and analyzes the results achieved in each of them, suggesting that 69 % of the articles mention an origin of the associated interruptions to logical failures, 75 % of the studies indicate that business continuity plans mostly have a preventive focus and 44 % suggest continuous testing of plans to ensure their effectiveness.