If your organization is looking to maintain business operations during and after a disaster, business continuity can help.
It can be difficult for your organization to maintain business operations without a business continuity plan when disasters such as cyberattacks, equipment failures, or natural disasters occur.
No one wants to experience slowed or downed business operations as a result of a disaster. Understanding what business continuity is can help your organization maintain business operations during and after a disaster occurs.
Coeo understands how important business continuity is and has helped thousands of organizations with their business continuity so they can maintain business functions when disasters occur.
By the end of this article, you will know what business continuity is, the key components of business continuity, and if a business continuity plan is a good fit for your organization.
What is business continuity?
Business continuity refers to an organization’s ability to maintain business functions and operations during and after a disaster.
Disasters such as cyberattacks, equipment failures, pandemics, and natural disasters can occur in any organization without warning.
The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 is a great example of how businesses needed to rely on business continuity to remain functioning during and after the pandemic.
Business continuity encompasses a set of plans and strategies to minimize downtime and ensure your organization maintains business functions during and after a disaster.
The goal of a business continuity strategy is to ensure at least minimal function for your organization to avoid losing as much business as possible.
A business continuity strategy establishes risk management processes and procedures that prevent disasters from disrupting mission-critical business functions.
Without a business continuity strategy, a disaster can cause significant downtime to an organization’s network which can cost your organization hundreds of thousands of dollars when your organization is not able to function and if any repairs need to be made.
If you would like to speak with our team to learn more about business continuity or ask any questions you may have you can schedule an appointment.
The key components of business continuity
Business continuity may be a good idea to implement in every organization. However, you may not know where to start or how business continuity can benefit your organization.
Understanding the key components of business continuity can help you come up with a strategy that is right for your organization. These components include:
Risk assessment
One of the main components of a business continuity plan is risk assessment. Risk assessments report on any risks or possible vulnerabilities that could disrupt your organization’s network.
Additionally, it may be a good idea to conduct a business impact analysis to determine the potential consequences of the risks or disruptions discovered in your network and the impact they might have on business functions, processes, and network systems.
Building network resiliency and redundancy
Another component of business continuity is building resiliency and redundancy in your network infrastructure to withstand disasters and recover from disruptions.
It is important to implement redundant systems and failover to ensure critical operations continue and minimize downtime.
Implementing solutions like SASE and SD-WAN into your network allows you to build redundant network connections to ensure your organization has as much uptime as possible.
Establish a crisis management team
Establishing a crisis management team to help set up protocols and coordinate response efforts when emergencies take place can help you avoid downtime.
This crisis management team can help ensure the organization maintains business operations during a disaster and can develop a communication plan to keep employees and customers informed during the disaster.
It is important to create emergency recovery and response actions to take place after a disaster occurs for your crisis management team to follow and communicate to the rest of the organization.
It is also important to prioritize critical functions and services for restoration and allocate resources and response teams to ensure these priorities are taken care of first.
Test your business continuity strategy
Once your organization has figured out a business continuity strategy, it is important to test out the plan to validate the procedures.
Test the continuity strategy by simulating disasters and network downtime to assess your team's readiness and assess the results to report on any areas that need improvement.
Even if your strategy goes according to plan, it is important to keep optimizing this plan as technology changes frequently.
Reviewing and updating your organization’s strategies to reflect changes in business and network environment and emerging threats is important in keeping your strategy effective.
Train and educate employees
Once testing is done and your business continuity strategy is perfected, it is important to educate and train employees on the importance of the plan and inform them on their respective roles and responsibilities.
Is business continuity a good fit for your organization?
Now you understand what business continuity is and the key components of business continuity. However, it is also important that you understand if business continuity is a good fit for your organization.
If your organization is looking to implement a strategy that allows your business to maintain or resume business functions during and after a disaster, business continuity may be a good fit for your organization.
Organizations that are looking to keep their network up and avoid network downtime by providing network redundancy and resiliency are good fits for business continuity.
If your organization discovers a potential threat in your network as a result of a risk assessment, a business continuity plan may be a good fit to help your organization avoid this threat and network downtime if the potential threat were to affect your infrastructure.
Additionally, business continuity is a good fit for organizations that have required compliances such as HIPAA for healthcare organizations that result in legal consequences if your organization does not comply.
However, if your organization already has a plan in place to recover and resume business functions after a disaster, you may not need business continuity.
Implementing business continuity in your organization
Now you know what business continuity is, the key components of business continuity, and if it is a good fit for your organization. This will help you determine if your organization should create and invest in a business continuity strategy.
Organizations can be susceptible to a disaster at any time with no warning that can take down their network and halt business functions.
This can cause extended downtime resulting in lost business that can cost your organization hundreds of thousands of dollars and can cost even more to repair the network.
For this reason, it is a good idea to implement business continuity and create a strategy that is right for your organization.
Coeo understands how important business continuity is and has helped thousands of organizations with their business continuity to prepare them when a disaster occurs and help them remain productive and continue business functions and operations.
We want you to understand what business continuity is and the key components of it so you can determine if it is a good fit for your organization.
If you would like to speak with our team to learn more about business continuity or ask any questions you may have you can schedule an appointment.
