Putting in place a robust business continuity plan can feel a little daunting, so we have put together six helpful steps your business should consider when building and implementing your strategy.
Did you know ONLY 27% of small businesses have a business continuity plan
A business continuity plan covers every aspect that is crucial to your business to be able to keep operational and recover as quickly & smoothly as possible from any type of disaster.
- Step One: Risk Assessment – What potential threats does your business face?
- Natural disaster
- Cyber threats
- Theft
- No power
- Hardware failure
- Internet outage
- Step Two: Business Impact Analysis – What would be the impact of an unplanned incident?
- Loss of business
- Effect on reputation
- Loss of data
- Loss of staff
- Step Three: Recovery Strategies – What is needed to keep your business operational?
- Processes
- People
- Resources
- Suppliers
- Recovery times
- Step Four: Design and Implement – Create your plan of action…
- IT disaster recovery plan
- Alternative resources
- Document workarounds
- Organise recovery teams
- Step Five: Train and Test – How are you making sure your plan works?
- Educate staff
- Staff awareness
- Mock test scenarios
- Step Six: Monitor, Maintain and Evolve – Are you continually updating & improving your plan?
- New / changing threats
- New technology
- Structure / operation changes
Sources
[1] Databarracks Data Health Check 2015 Report
[2] Strategic Resource Institute
