With malware and ransomware attacks on the rise, businesses are starting to realise that they are just a single failure away from a massive company-wide disaster. The frequency of natural disasters is on the up, too, with floods alone expected to increase by as much as 35% over the next few decades.
So, presented with these challenges, your company must have a comprehensive disaster recovery/business recovery plan in place to ensure you can mitigate the worst of any disaster.
But what is a business continuity plan? And what are its component parts?
What is a Business Continuity Plan?
In short, a business continuity plan is a carefully thought out strategy that is put in place to help mitigate the risk of an impact on your company’s services and products during a disaster.
A firm’s specific plan will relate to the specific challenges they face. However, all firms will have plans in place to mitigate threats posed by cyber-attacks and natural disasters such as flooding, fire, and storm damage.
Now you’re aware of why you should have a disaster recovery plan in place, what are some of the component parts you will need to include in each plan?
1. Preparing for Business Disruptions – Scenario Planning
You need to understand what is likely to happen during any business interruption and your options. For instance, play out the most likely disaster scenarios and then hypothesise how your staff can retain access to critical files and infrastructure so they can meet their customer needs when it happens.
You can then start implementing measures such as cloud backups, off-site file storage locations, and virtual servers and develop a disaster recovery protocol.
2. Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Team
It would be best if you had a team of relevant staff and/or support agents who are ready, willing and able to kick into action whenever a disaster strikes. The best plan is to have these individuals based outside of the business so they won’t be affected by the restrictions that your business may face in the event of a disaster.
Having a well-versed and experienced team of off-site engineers can make all the difference to how a business recovers and ensure that your technology solutions are adequately backed up.
3. Develop an Impact Analysis
You need to know what level of impact any possible disruption will have on your company – from an immediate cash flow problem through to local or national headlines regarding your business. From there, you can plan for how you handle different scenarios.
It’s essential to separate different types of failures during your analysis, as some scenarios are far more damaging than others. For instance, if a storm knocks out your phone lines for several days, you can easily ensure you aren’t affected by moving your company over to VoIP (hosted telephony) services today.
Losing access to all of your server files and having them held to ransom by hackers is a far more complex and deadly problem to deal with and thus needs its own thorough analysis.
Ensure Your Business Can Still Function in the Face of Disaster with Business Continuity Services from Corp Networking
The thing about natural disasters and cyber attacks is that they can strike at any time, without warning. Without a plan in place to keep everything moving, you could find yourself bankrupt within a matter of weeks. There’s a reason that 60% of small companies go out of business within six months of falling victim to a cyber attack.
Thus, your job is to ensure that you have the necessary plans and protocols in place to ensure that, should the worst happen, you can get everything back up and running within a matter of minutes, rather than days or weeks.
At Corp Networking, we offer a comprehensive suite of disaster recovery services to ensure your IT infrastructure is protected against all eventualities. From cloud-based backups to off-site data storage and system recovery software, you can be back on your feet in no time with our support.
If you would like to learn more about how we can help you develop a robust business continuity plan, make sure to take a look at our disaster recovery services here or contact a member of our experienced team regarding your concerns.
