IT disaster? Time for a business continuity plan?

Typical scenario, it is Monday morning and you show up in the office but your network is down. No internet, no email, no nothing.  Your company is officially experiencing an IT disaster.  What is your business continuity plan?

It is important to remember that in these completive days of business, companies rely heavily on their IT infrastructure so IT disaster now stands for much more including loss of productivity, profitability and reputation. So is your business prepared for an IT disaster?

How do you create a business continuity plan? Simple, follow these steps.

  1. Separate disaster recovery from business continuity

Unfortunately, many companies confuse disaster recovery with business continuity however you have to identify the key differences.  Disaster Recovery is the restoration of business operations and IT infrastructure after a disaster has already occurred whereas Business Continuity is focused on maintaining business operations and profits throughout a disaster.

It is important to remember that disaster recovery is the time after a disaster to get up and running.  Business continuity looks at the company as a whole.  When developing a business continuity plan, you have to ensure you can run your business in a profitable manner while recovering from a disaster.

  1. How to create your business continuity plan

There are a couple of steps when creating your business continuity plan.

  • First step: Identify which IT assets are vulnerable to disaster.
  • Second step: Evaluate what will happen if you were to lose the functionality of a specific asset.

Now that assets have been identified, you need to address the following questions:

  • What is the purpose of my business continuity plan?
  • What disasters can affect my IT infrastructure?
  • What are my key business areas?
  • Which different business areas, assets and departments depend on each other?
  • What is the longest amount of time I can go without functionality of IT assets?

Now that you have addressed these two questions, you can sit down with your team or managed IT services provider and start planning your business continuity plan.  Your business continuity plan will address multiple levels of disaster including short term disasters, long term disasters all the way up to permanent loss of a building.

Need help creating your business continuity plan? You should turn to your IT department or trusted IT Consultant. If your business does not have these resources, 365 iT SOLUTIONS we can help as we provide industry leading IT Support ServicesIT Outsourcing ServicesTech Support Services and Cloud Services.

We can even offer our Complimentary Network and Security Assessment to get a complete understanding of your business and business goals.

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