With technology crucial for businesses to run in today’s world, what happens when technology goes down or does not work as it should? How do you keep your business running and do you know how long it will take to return everything to normal working order if crisis were to occur?
This is where Business Continuity Planning comes into play. A Business Continuity Plan is a document that outlines how a business will continue operating during an unplanned disruption of service. This plan encompasses further detail than provided in a Disaster Recovery Plan as it covers all aspects of an organisations operations. Plans typically contain a checklist that includes supplies and equipment, data backups and backup site locations (such as offsite or online).
A main component in these plans is the recovery plans for handling information systems disruption. This can include disruptions to networks, servers, personal computers, mobile devices, internet connectivity and cloud-based services. The plan should cover steps and accepted methods to re-establish productivity back into the business to ensure key business needs can be met.
There are three primary aspects to a business continuity plan for key applications and processes:
- High availability: Provides the capability for a business to access critical applications and systems regardless of local failures. These failures might be in the business processes, in the physical facilities or in the IT hardware or software.
- Continuous operations: Safeguards the ability to keep things running during a disruption, as well as during planned outages such as scheduled backups or planned maintenance.
- Disaster recovery: Establish a way to recover your data and/or continue to operate at a different site if a disaster occurs within business or otherwise renders it inoperable.
With the current Covid pandemic still looming, businesses should organise a time to review their Business continuity plan or work towards developing one to help with the ever-changing business landscape.
Some areas to review include:
- Remote Working: In the event that an area needs to go into lockdown, is there a plan to keep staff productive while working at home.
- Cryptolocker / Ransomware: With the increase in ransomware attacks, does your organisation have a plan for recovering data and agreed recovery time objectives.
- Computer Outage: If a staff member’s computer stops working due to hardware malfunction, is there a plan for ensuring the staff member can continue to perform their duties.
- Internet Outage: As more services move from on-premise to the cloud, the reliance of internet increases. Is there a plan for the event of an internet outage?
Business continuity is useful to help keep businesses running and delivering services to their clients. If you are unsure where to start or want to talk more about what ONGC can do to help with your Business Continuity Plan, contact us on 1800 664 248 to schedule a meeting today.