Unexpected downtime is the bane of every business’ existence. It halts operations, reduces profits, and damages trust. Unfortunately, it’s also inevitable – or is it? What if there was a way to reduce downtime, or prevent it entirely?
This is the magic of business continuity planning. With the right strategy, you can keep business processes moving even during the worst situations imaginable. This protects profits, maintains trust, and ultimately secures your future.
But how do you accomplish it?
What is Business Continuity Planning, and Why Does It Matter?
A business continuity plan (BCP) is a living document that outlines how you will respond to negative events such as:
- Cyber-attacks
- Natural disasters
- Outages
Unlike disaster recovery (which is focused on returning to normal operations after they have been disrupted), the point of a business continuity plan is to prevent this from happening at all. In a world where operational resilience is ever more important, this is essential. By improving your ability to continue working in the event of a disaster, you:
- Minimise downtime and financial losses
- Maintain customer trust and reputation
- Meet compliance and regulatory requirements
- Improve internal preparedness and resilience
This improves your ability to compete, grow, and thrive.
Your Step-by-Step Guide to Business Continuity Planning
1. Conduct a Business Impact Analysis (BIA)
A BIA describes every emergency that could feasibly affect your business operations, organised by level of impact. This is a key step in the planning process. It allows you to prioritise business disruptions based on importance, which can be especially helpful if you have a limited budget to work with.
2. Discover Gaps
With your BIA in hand, assess your IT infrastructure and determine where your biggest gaps are. Which systems are non-negotiable? Which data is irreplaceable? What would it take to shut down critical business functions? This step will guide your efforts moving forward.
3. Develop a Crisis Management Strategy
Working your way down the list, create a response plan for each disaster. Include:
- Data backup and recovery procedures
- Alternate communication channels
- Redundancies for crucial infrastructure and workloads
- Alternate work locations (for example, work from home)
- How and when you will explain the situation to affected parties, and authorities where necessary
- A strategy to handle long-term issues that cannot be resolved quickly (such as an office burning down)
4. Document the Business Continuity Plan
Always keep your plan in writing, and easily accessible. It doesn’t matter how well-prepared you are if your staff have no idea what they’re supposed to do. Prepare for the fact that your normal business continuity manager may be out of the office that day, and digital systems may be offline. Ensure that even in these scenarios, your team can quickly and effectively carry out the plan.
5. Train and Test
If your business continuity plan is untested, then you do not have one. Often, even the best strategies go awry in a real-world scenario. Staff panic and forget their roles, key figures are unavailable, and everything that can go wrong will. Run simulations to iron these kinks out in a safe environment. If anything goes wrong, provide additional training or find an alternative solution. Test again. You can never test your plan too many times.
6. Review and Update
Your business is not static, and your continuity plan shouldn’t be either. Schedule period reviews to check if adjustments need to be made. You should perform these:
- At least once per year
- After an emergency (especially if something goes wrong with your plan)
- After any major changes occur within your business
Business Continuity Plan Examples
While your business continuity plan will be unique depending on your needs, it may be beneficial to look at some examples:
- A healthcare organisation is at the mercy of a ransomware attack. Fortunately, they had data backups available, segmented their networks, and have alerted their managed service provider (MSP) to the situation at hand.
- An office building catches fire. The staff evacuate to their secondary work location, where they can continue in peace. Someone calls the fire department, then informs customers that the location is temporarily unavailable. All data is stored in the cloud, and is thus accessible from any location.
- A cloud provider experiences a random outage (such as the recent AWS one). But your company has backed up all critical data and workflows across multiple vendors, so work continues as normal.
Keep Your Business Running in Every Situation
The occasional disruption is inevitable, but that doesn’t need to mean your entire company shuts down. With careful planning and regular tests, you can build a plan that allows you to keep operations moving even during the worst-case scenario. Don’t wait for an emergency to happen – create your business continuity plan today, and secure your future.
Whether you need help with long-term continuity planning or a single project, iCare Cyber is here. Our IT experts provide the guidance and support you need to make every business dream a reality. Learn how our project managers can assist you today.
FAQs
Disaster recovery planning is about restoring operations after they have already been disrupted. Business continuity planning, on the other hand, prevents this from happening in the first place. Ideally, you should have both.
Your business continuity plan should be updated at least once per year, after every emergency, and after any changes occur within the company.
Every business needs continuity planning. Small businesses often need it more, as they have tighter budgets and would thus find it more difficult to recover.
Business continuity tests ensure that your plan works as expected, and allow you to catch any issues that prevent it from succeeding.
While business continuity services are not essential, they can provide valuable guidance. If you can spare the resources, it may be worth considering.