What would your business due if a major catastrophe happened? This could be anything which disrupted your business. A flood comes through and damages your warehouse. A hacker attacks your main server and corrupts your client database. Your partner suddenly decides he no longer wants to be in business. All of these major events can disrupt or even close your business down.
Business continuity planning is critical for any SMB. Is yours ready?
Some Common Business Continuity Myths
There are certain misconceptions out there about the need for business continuity planning. It is important to know the reality behind these myths.
"Business continuity planning takes too much time." How much time is it going to take to recover from a major emergency?
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According to the Insurance Institute of Business & Home Safety, 1 out of every 4 businesses will not reopen after a major disaster. Do you want your business to be one of those businesses?
Making the Investment in Your Business
A smart business knows that business continuity planning is an investment in the future of the business, no matter what happens. It will ensure your company can weather any catastrophe that might occur.
The first step is to establish the need for business continuity within your organization. You need to make this kind of planning a part of your company culture, not just a task undertaken by management. Having a central coordinator is critical. That person is in charge of establishing and implementing this kind of planning and maintaining it in the future.
Next, you need to identify and document your company's key functions and related services. You need to understand the activities and resources required to deliver your core services. You need to decide if the function is minor, moderate, or significant. And if the need for that service will change over time. For example, payroll might not be something you consider significant during the first 24 hours after the disaster occurs, but it will be significant by the next
a business continuity plan starting with a risk analysis, business impact analysis, and alignment of critical
What is the purpose of having a Business Continuity Plan policy definition that defines the organization’s Business Impact Analysis? To identify critical business functions and what disruptions in the services can have on the organization.
The goal is to minimize the impact of any disruption by containing it within a predictable and predetermined period of time. To do this, I recommend that this plan be developed and implemented with as many preventative controls, contingency resources, and procedures designed to allow the organization to quicky bounce back from any long-term business
Why is a business impact analysis (BIA) an important first step in defining a business continuity plan (BCP)? The BIA identifies the critical and
Packaging X must have a plan in place to implement the previously discussed business continuity plan (BCP). The implementation plan is important as these plans can reveal new issues and challenges that may not have been originally anticipated. The plan is used to help minimize any impact of disruption and to ready all employees. The risks identified earlier include:
This plan addresses issues required for continuation of essential business functions, such as need assessment, communication and coordination under rapidly changing circumstances.
These chapters discuss the recovery strategies that the business would need to restore vital functions to an acceptable level following a disastrous event. Without these plans or strategies, a business could suffer tremendous losses such as market share, competitive advantage, and valuable customers. Having the CEAS program is one way that an organization attempts to remedy this situation. It is very important that CEAS is incorporated in the disaster recovery plan of all business entity. Pre-selected employees that would need access to the facility, and processes that would need to be up and running will go a long way in preserving a company’s data, reputation, and financial resources, and competitive
Explain the actions necessary to create corporate awareness and enhance the skills necessary to develop, maintain and carry out the Business Continuity Plan. Give examples.
Business Continuity Planning is a method, which is supported and funded by management, designed to assist businesses with identifying potential risks, threats, and losses. Business Continuity Planning primary purpose is to identify/develop security measures to reduce and safeguard from the risks and threats.
Every business and organization can experience a serious incident which can prevent it from continuing normal operations. This can happen any day at any time. The potential causes are many and varied: flood, explosion, computer malfunction, accident, grievous act... the list is endless.
A disaster recovery plan and a business continuity plan, are very important to all business and their marketing plan. These plans provide detail strategies on how the business will continue to operate, before, doing and after a disaster. About 25% of business that do not have these plans and are hit by a disaster, fail to reopen. (Smith, n.d.). This is why a disaster and recovery and business continuity plan are important to a business if they wish to withstand a disaster and reopen with little or no problem.
It is imperative to have a disaster recovery plan, it is no longer safe for any business, small or big, to have no protection against natural disasters or even getting hacked which is a common practice. Anyone of those
Disasters have become an inevitable part of businesses and organizations as well. They not only have a major effect on business and organizational continuity; they also result to an overhaul in organizational operational mechanisms (Awasthy, 2009). It is for this reason that many organizations and business resort to preparing business continuity plans and disaster recovery plans that will facilitate better disaster management in future. Effective disaster recovery plans are important to every business and organization (Thejendra, 2008).
Now that we understand why we need a disaster recovery plan, we need to understand how to develop and plan a solid and reliable plan. To do this management needs to determine the scope of what needs to be covered by the plan. The scope can be categorized into 3 issues. Occupant issues, building issues, and business issues (Gustin 8). The occupant issues are related to the physical staff. When addressing occupant issues, management needs to plan to address the needs of every employee. Management needs to consider disabled workers and possible visitors to the facility when creating a plan. By thoroughly analyzing the occupants of the building, they can make educated adjustments to address the building issues. These include fire escape routes and alternate routes for disabled employees. They must also consider the buildings geographical location. The building may be
Business Continuity is often referred to as the measure of lost time possible in a mission critical application.