Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery in the Digital Age

 

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Not long ago, the main threats to a business were primarily physical in nature: adverse weather, a utility failure, a violent employee. Today, companies must still contend with all of these longstanding threats, while also accounting for the newest—and most significant—source of potential danger: digital technology.


In our digital age, cybersecurity has emerged as a leading concern for both business continuity and disaster recovery. In fact, companies list threats to IT as their top source of business disruption, according to the Business Continuity Institute. Cyberattack ranks No. 1, while data breach and unplanned IT outages follow close behind.


The potential impact of these threats is significant: Consider the fact that most companies hit by a single data breach lose about $4 million. How would your own business weather such a severe financial blow? Would it be able to recover from other effects of a breach, such as a damaged reputation, lowered productivity, loss of valuable data, and so on?  

Proactive Protection

There’s no doubt that cyber threats are on the rise, and that they have the power to significantly impact your business continuity and disaster recovery efforts. The question is, how do you protect your business against cyberattack?


Businesses of all kinds must get proactive about cybersecurity in order to prevent a data breach. For some, this means investing in IT specialists who can help prevent and defend against increasingly sophisticated attacks. But there are other steps every business can take to integrate digital threats into your planning for business continuity and disaster recovery, such as safeguarding your organization from ransomware and improving your crisis response capabilities.


Read How Peak10 Uses Mobile Technology to Improve Their BCM


A Growing Threat

Ransomware is one of the fastest-growing cyber schemes, netting hackers millions of dollars every year. Businesses in all industries, as well as non-profits, police departments, and the federal government itself, have been extorted by ransomware schemes.


Ransomware usually arrives in an email. The unsuspecting user clicks on a link, initiating the malware, which encrypts all data on the user’s computer, making it completely inaccessible—until he or she pays a ransom. There have been countless examples of ransomware victims losing access to vital data, including patient information at a hospital, customer banking details, and even Social Security numbers.


Data backup is essential to preventing ransomware attacks. If you are the target of ransomware, but you have all your data backed up to the cloud or local storage devices, you can easily access your data without having to pay the ransom. But be forewarned: Any backup device that is directly connected to affected desktops may also be taken hostage, so it’s important to regularly back up data while offline.


Another helpful technique is to educate employees on the dangers of ransomware and how to spot potential attacks. Train users on how to scan emails and attachments for malware before opening them. And whitelist approved software applications, which helps to ensure that employees can’t freely install executable files from unapproved sources.

A Move Toward ‘Resiliency’

Another way to incorporate digital threats into your business continuity and disaster recovery programs requires a bit of a change in thinking. It involves fostering the understanding that business continuity, disaster recovery, and security are all interconnected.


It’s no longer enough to plan for disaster recovery, where business functions go down for some period of time and then are brought back online. In the meantime, the organization can lose money and customers, and data may be compromised.


True organizational resiliency allows you to “bounce back” from a crisis without total disruption. Your IT assets may be limited for a period of time, but with effective planning and leveraging of technology, your company should be able to avoid a complete shutdown. The only way to ensure this level of resiliency is to encourage real-time response to digital crises—and to see that cybersecurity is a vital component of resiliency.


If your organization is hit by a cyberattack or experiences an IT outage, it is vital that the relevant stakeholders (IT leadership, the crisis management team, etc.) know exactly what to do. The moment of crisis is not the time to figure this out; you must plan ahead for digital emergencies, and then ensure that people know how to handle them.


In our fast-moving digital age, stakeholders require immediate access to your crisis plan, regardless of when an emergency strikes or where they are located at the time. This enables them to activate the plan and the crisis team immediately, ensuring that they can take the actions required to move the organization through the crisis quickly and confidently. One effective way to do this is using a crisis management app, which digitizes crisis planning documents, providing all stakeholders with real-time access to vital information at any time and from any location.

Get Proactive

Through proactive planning and real-time response, companies can begin to move from a reactive to a proactive cybersecurity position. For your organization, this requires an acceptance of the dynamic, fast-moving nature of digital threats, and an understanding of the real-time response that is required to combat them.

Emergency Management Case Study with Peak10