When disaster strikes, businesses must have a plan of action. Not only do critical services need to be maintained in times of disruption, but safety and security must be maintained. This past year has seen plenty of business disasters–from cybercrime to physical challenges by way of severe weather and natural disasters. Having a detailed, business continuity plan is essential for ensuring your company gets through whatever fate throws at you.
Business Continuity Planning Organization
The first step in any action movie and business continuity planning is the same; you need to build your team. Senior management form each sector must be brought together to establish a detailed and thorough plan in the event of a disaster. This committee, will build a program, organize roles for individuals, create any teams needed for exercising and further plan development, and they will identify critical areas of risk and prioritize essential operations.
Analyze Business Impact
Not only does analyzing your business impact help to identify both internal and external critical business processes, but it helps to create a priority list to ensure ongoing delivery and quick recovery. A business impact analysis must include a study on how disruption will affect revenue creating services so that those areas that generate the most revenue are protected to prevent disaster causing a financial collapse. Consumer and shareholders must also be considered to determine the more intangible losses in confidence and commitment.
Create A Detailed Response & Recovery Plan
Once the first two steps have been undertaken a highly detailed plan must be organized to ensure that regardless of situation critical function can be maintained. Every necessary function of operation must be covered, with attention paid to all possible risks and threats.
Train Your Employees
While having plans established is the first step, making sure the essential staff is well trained and aware of the procedure is second. Each department will have their own critical roles in case of disaster, and it’s vital that they understand what they are. For a safe and timely response, individual departments must educate and train staff on their roles in case of any of the disasters the response and recovery details.
Assure Quality
Once training has been completed a test run of each response and recovery plan can highlight any weaknesses or gaps and allow for improvements. This quality assurance phase is necessary to ensure that in the event of a true threat, all the bases are covered.
IT Solutions and Network Protection from Global Harvest Networks
Global Harvest Networks has been working for the Washington D.C., Maryland, and Virginia areas since 2000 and we’re ready to lend our expertise to you! We offer a wide range of IT solutions that can tackle any and all of your network’s needs. Please don’t hesitate to contact us so that we can help you! You can also give us a call at 443-270-0401. We’re ready to assess your system, diagnose the problem, and help you find a plan that will strengthen your network, all free of charge! For more information on the latest things you should protect your system from, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube.