40 percent of small businesses never reopen after a disaster. Another 25 percent fail within a year later. IT downtime costs business an average of $1.55 million and 545 hours in staff productivity per year. Those are troubling statistics, considering 48 percent of small businesses lack a business continuity plan. Business disruptions impact you in the long-term by influencing customer and investor perceptions of confidence. So, it’d be strange to not have a business continuity plan. The potential negative effects are broader than we think they are at first glance.

Wait, What’s Business Continuity?

Business continuity refers to the collection of tasks and practices necessary to prevent a business from breaking down during and after catastrophes. However, we have the habit of thinking the worst won’t happen to us. Or, we think we’re not big enough to warrant putting in prevention systems. Unfortunately, reality isn’t so kind. There are several ways your business can be disrupted:

• Natural Disasters
• Infrastructure Problems: Issues with utilities and infrastructure resulting from natural disasters, fallen trees, etc.
• Cyber Attacks: DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks, among other malicious hacking attempts to disrupt your business, are growing threats. IT security and backup plays a large role in mitigating cyber attacks.
• Staff Shortages
• Ransomware attacks: Ransomware is a type of malicious software that can infect your computer or IT infrastructure, and encrypt your files or lock you out of your systems, making them inaccessible. The attackers then demand payment in exchange for the decryption key or access to your systems. Ransomware back-ups can restore it to a pre-attack state, minimizing the impact of the attack.
• Accidents and Errors: Employees can accidentally damage IT systems. Not everybody in your company grasps the dangers of working with technology. To illustrate, installing a personal wi-fi router into a managed internet network can cause serious problems—reducing security, and even denying internet service to many employees.

As you’ve seen, business disruption can strike from many angles. A strong business continuity plan, developed by IT professionals, is necessary to protect yourself from all of the possible IT problems. CorCystems runs regular backups and implements a detailed disaster recovery plan to ensure business continuity. Constantly we are IT network support so that you don’t start your business day with network failure.

How Do You Create A Business Continuity Plan?

Okay, so you know it’s important to create a business continuity plan to stay competitive. But, how do you go about it? You can rely on IT providers to create portions of these plans. But they can’t provide all the information. Indeed, you are the one who understands who the key players in your company are. If these people are gone, the vacancies can create a bottleneck in your company’s workflow. Are there key supplies or equipment for your company? It might be wise to stock a good deal of these materials in case your access to new supplies is restricted. Talk to any employees who have gone through business disasters successfully. They are likely to have considerable advice on how to set up a disaster recovery plan for your situation. Now, here are the general steps to create a business continuity plan:

1. Identify the scope of the plan.
2. Identify critical business areas.
3. Identify key functions.
4. Identify dependencies among various business areas and functions.
5. Determine acceptable downtime for each key function.
6. Create a plan to maintain operations.

Test Your Business Continuity Plan

But, theories can only go so far. To see if your business continuity plan really works, you need to test it. If you don’t see the plan in action, there’s no way to know if it will fulfill its purpose. Actually, go all the way and try to break your plan. You really want to give the plan honest testing. In general, you want to test your business continuity plan at least two times per year. The frequency of your schedule depends on the type and size of your organization. Also, consider how much growth your company is going through. If your company’s processes and IT changes are minimal, you will need to perform fewer tests per year.

Review and Continually Improve Your Plan

Be sure to keep your business continuity plan up-to-date. It’s definitely not one of those “set it and forget it” tools. Remember, a plan that is outdated wastes your time and can mislead you into believing you’re prepared for disaster. Don’t fall victim to laziness for this one. If you’d like to know more about how to set up or review your business continuity plan, just give us a call. We’re sure to help you develop a full-fledged strategy.