Best Business Practices: Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

Best Business Practices: Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

The COVID-19 pandemic made many businesses realize how important it was to be prepared and ready for an eventual crisis. Good news: even though you can't predict what could happen in the future, you can prepare for most case scenarios thanks to two tools:

• Business Continuity Plan
• Disaster Recovery Strategy

1. What is business continuity?

Business continuity is a business's readiness to maintain critical functions after an emergency or disruption. In other words, according to Investopedia, "A business continuity plan (BCP) is a system of prevention and recovery from potential threats to a company. The plan ensures that personnel and assets are protected and are able to function quickly in the event of a disaster."

Why is business continuity so important?

Business continuity should be a top priority because maintaining critical functions after an emergency or disruption can make a big difference in success and failure for a business. Organizations must get a continuity strategy before something happens to save money and time, as it will able companies to ensure operations even during a crisis. 

As seen above, there are many aspects of business continuity, technology being one of them. Cyber attacks can cost organizations much, and contrary to what most people think, they actively target small and medium companies. A good continuity plan should include a cybersecurity strategy to deal with cybersecurity threats: data breaches, loss of access, ransomware attacks, malicious insider incidents, etc. A great and comprehensive business continuity plan inherently comes with a good disaster recovery strategy.

What kind of events or to be considered when designing a BCP?

Here is a non-exhaustive list of events and disasters that could touch any organization:

• Security breaches
• Natural disasters
• Power outages
• Equipment failures
• Sudden staff departure
• Supply chains disruptions
• On-premise accidents
• Team member accessibility to work-related systems, applications, and data

It can feel overwhelming, but if you tackle every item one by one, you'll be able to create a comprehensive business continuity plan. See the steps to follow below.

How to create a Business Continuity Plan?

1. INTERNAL COMMUNICATION: To create a comprehensive Business Continuity Plan, it is essential to discuss and talk to key players in your organization's various departments to identify the goals and objectives of the plan. 
2. EMERGENCY TEAM: You will need to establish an emergency team composed of cross-functional leaders.
3. RISK ASSESSMENT: it will enable you to identify your organization's essential functions and then prepare a plan for each to ensure business continuity, even during a big crisis.
4. KEEP ON IMPROVING YOUR BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLAN: Train staff, revise, and update the plan regularly. 

Even though a Business Continuity Plan is an internal process, don't hesitate to use templates, as they can be beneficial to ensure everything is noticed. We selected free Business Continuity Plan templates for you:

• Business Continuity Plan Template
• Small firm business continuity plan template
• Business continuity plan template for entrepreneurs

A great Business Continuity Plan can help keep your organization active even through emergencies and disasters. However, it is also vital to design a comprehensive Disaster Recovery Strategy to address issues afterward.

2. What is disaster recovery? 

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery are closely linked, but they are two distinct processes. 

Disaster recovery is an organization's method of regaining access and functionality to its IT infrastructure after natural disasters, cyber-attacks, or even business disruptions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. AWS describes Disaster Recovery as "the process by which an organization anticipates and addresses technology-related disasters."

A disaster is an unexpected problem resulting in a slowdown, interruption, or network outage in an IT system. Outages come in many forms, including the following examples:

• An earthquake or fire
• Technology failures
• System incompatibilities
• Simple human error 
• Intentional unauthorized access by third parties

These disasters disrupt business operations, cause client service problems, and result in revenue loss. A disaster recovery plan helps organizations respond promptly to disruptive events and provides key benefits.

The best way to design an efficient Disaster Recovery Strategy depends on your IT department:

1. If you have an entire IT department available in your organization, your team should be able to design it using a Disaster Recovery Plan template.
2. If you only have one IT team member or no IT team at all, it might be better to outsource this process with an MSP (Managed Services Provider). At LENET, we can help you to design a comprehensive technology-related business continuity plan and assist you in disaster recovery.

Good Business Continuity Plan and effectively managed Disaster Recovery tools are essential for businesses to stay up after a crisis. Companies that make Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery priorities are much less vulnerable to being wiped out by a cyber attack, be part of them.