What would your business due if a major catastrophe happened? This could be anything which disrupted your business. A flood comes through and damages your warehouse. A hacker attacks your main server and corrupts your client database. Your partner suddenly decides he no longer wants to be in business. All of these major events can disrupt or even close your business down.
Business continuity planning is critical for any SMB. Is yours ready?
Some Common Business Continuity Myths
There are certain misconceptions out there about the need for business continuity planning. It is important to know the reality behind these myths.
"Business continuity planning takes too much time." How much time is it going to take to recover from a major emergency?
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According to the Insurance Institute of Business & Home Safety, 1 out of every 4 businesses will not reopen after a major disaster. Do you want your business to be one of those businesses?
Making the Investment in Your Business
A smart business knows that business continuity planning is an investment in the future of the business, no matter what happens. It will ensure your company can weather any catastrophe that might occur.
The first step is to establish the need for business continuity within your organization. You need to make this kind of planning a part of your company culture, not just a task undertaken by management. Having a central coordinator is critical. That person is in charge of establishing and implementing this kind of planning and maintaining it in the future.
Next, you need to identify and document your company's key functions and related services. You need to understand the activities and resources required to deliver your core services. You need to decide if the function is minor, moderate, or significant. And if the need for that service will change over time. For example, payroll might not be something you consider significant during the first 24 hours after the disaster occurs, but it will be significant by the next
a business continuity plan starting with a risk analysis, business impact analysis, and alignment of critical
Why is a business impact analysis (BIA) an important first step in defining a business continuity plan (BCP)? The BIA identifies the critical and
The goal is to minimize the impact of any disruption by containing it within a predictable and predetermined period of time. To do this, I recommend that this plan be developed and implemented with as many preventative controls, contingency resources, and procedures designed to allow the organization to quicky bounce back from any long-term business
Packaging X must have a plan in place to implement the previously discussed business continuity plan (BCP). The implementation plan is important as these plans can reveal new issues and challenges that may not have been originally anticipated. The plan is used to help minimize any impact of disruption and to ready all employees. The risks identified earlier include:
What is the purpose of having a Business Continuity Plan policy definition that defines the organization’s Business Impact Analysis? To identify critical business functions and what disruptions in the services can have on the organization.
These chapters discuss the recovery strategies that the business would need to restore vital functions to an acceptable level following a disastrous event. Without these plans or strategies, a business could suffer tremendous losses such as market share, competitive advantage, and valuable customers. Having the CEAS program is one way that an organization attempts to remedy this situation. It is very important that CEAS is incorporated in the disaster recovery plan of all business entity. Pre-selected employees that would need access to the facility, and processes that would need to be up and running will go a long way in preserving a company’s data, reputation, and financial resources, and competitive
Explain the actions necessary to create corporate awareness and enhance the skills necessary to develop, maintain and carry out the Business Continuity Plan. Give examples.
A Business Continuity Plan is a Plan to keep a business up and running in case a disaster or disruption was to occur to a business. A Business continuity plan contains procedures and policies that detail the proper steps to get a business back operationally. The ultimate outcome is minimal downtime. Attacks on businesses nationally and globally by Cyberterrorist has adopted some of the measures used in forensic investigation. The steps used by digital forensics are being adopted into a company Business continuity plan.
Disasters have become an inevitable part of businesses and organizations as well. They not only have a major effect on business and organizational continuity; they also result to an overhaul in organizational operational mechanisms (Awasthy, 2009). It is for this reason that many organizations and business resort to preparing business continuity plans and disaster recovery plans that will facilitate better disaster management in future. Effective disaster recovery plans are important to every business and organization (Thejendra, 2008).
A disaster recovery plan and a business continuity plan, are very important to all business and their marketing plan. These plans provide detail strategies on how the business will continue to operate, before, doing and after a disaster. About 25% of business that do not have these plans and are hit by a disaster, fail to reopen. (Smith, n.d.). This is why a disaster and recovery and business continuity plan are important to a business if they wish to withstand a disaster and reopen with little or no problem.
It is imperative to have a disaster recovery plan, it is no longer safe for any business, small or big, to have no protection against natural disasters or even getting hacked which is a common practice. Anyone of those
Every business and organization can experience a serious incident which can prevent it from continuing normal operations. This can happen any day at any time. The potential causes are many and varied: flood, explosion, computer malfunction, accident, grievous act... the list is endless.
Now that we understand why we need a disaster recovery plan, we need to understand how to develop and plan a solid and reliable plan. To do this management needs to determine the scope of what needs to be covered by the plan. The scope can be categorized into 3 issues. Occupant issues, building issues, and business issues (Gustin 8). The occupant issues are related to the physical staff. When addressing occupant issues, management needs to plan to address the needs of every employee. Management needs to consider disabled workers and possible visitors to the facility when creating a plan. By thoroughly analyzing the occupants of the building, they can make educated adjustments to address the building issues. These include fire escape routes and alternate routes for disabled employees. They must also consider the buildings geographical location. The building may be
Business Continuity is often referred to as the measure of lost time possible in a mission critical application.
Owning a business can have many stressors day to day. When starting a business there is a lot of planning and preparation involved. Many small businesses are owners who have put their own money into the business and look at it as an investment. Unfortunately with all the planning that goes into starting a business, one thing is often over looked. Most of the time the “what ifs”, are not part of the planning stage. One reason for this is that people do not like to think of the bad things that could or may happen. So with all the time and planning put into starting a business why not put some extra thought into a plan B if a disaster strikes? This plan B could be a business continuity plan or a disaster recovery plan. Business continuity plans are an essential part of the modern day business. There are so many potential disasters for small businesses that could seize the production or even close the business down for good. A recent study from Gartner Inc., found that “90% of companies that experience data loss go out of business within two years. It also found that 80% of company owners have not thought about how they would keep their businesses up and running if a data disaster occurs.” According to the Association of Records Managers and Administrators, “about 60 percent of businesses that experience a major disaster such as a fire close