We previously mentioned that having a Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plan significantly reduces downtime losses. It’s essentially a playbook of procedures enabling organizations to recover from disasters and resume operations. Having a clear plan readies your company against disruption, whether it’s man-made or a natural calamity, and ensures that operations continue as close to normal as possible with only limited losses.
In this blog, we take a deeper look into the matter by highlighting four critical areas that your company’s plan must consider to be effective in mitigating disasters.
Risk Management and Mitigation
Risk Management and Mitigation refer to the process of assessing potential risks that can affect your company’s operations. It helps identify the procedures you need to manage risks and achieve quicker recovery. You can start by listing down your most critical business elements, including key services, resources, and staff. Then, include any possibilities that can affect them, such as power failures, natural calamities, cyber threats from various IT entry points, etc.
Speaking of IT, we highly recommend seeking assistance from tech experts to mitigate IT risks due to its highly specialized nature. While your IT team can perform day-to-day maintenance tasks, they may lose focus on improving your company’s core competency. Your IT team can hand off this responsibility to data center companies such as Beeinfotech PH whose colocation solutions include maintenance services that anticipate risks resulting in hardware failure.
A Chain of Command
A sound Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan contains a clear Chain of Command that outlines key personnel who will take the lead during disasters and distributes responsibilities to everyone else. A management team is vital in reducing confusion on what to do and whom to follow within the company, especially during abrupt disasters that leave great uncertainty.
The Chain of Command policy should include details of your main disaster recovery team that devises and implements your business continuity procedures. The team’s tasks are varied and may include responsibilities such as crisis communication management, looking for alternate sites for operations, impact assessment, and data recovery. Training should also be added to develop the skills of employees in facing other challenges during disasters.
Communication
Communication takes on a critical role whenever disasters strike. Your customers and stakeholders must be informed and constantly updated on what happened and which measures you are taking to mitigate negative impact. Clear communication coming from you also averts problems arising from misinformation. Internally, the Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan itself has to be communicated to all employees, as everyone must have a basic understanding of their roles and responsibilities during disasters.
The government also mandates the public disclosure of disasters. The National Privacy Commission, for instance, may penalize your company if you fail to notify your customers within 72 hours upon discovering a data breach. To avoid cyber attacks that may lead to data breach, you can tap the services of a cybersecurity partner. Beeinfotech PH HIVE data center, for example, gives access to a Security Operations Center for 24/7 monitoring and detecting of cyber threats.
Reviewing, Testing, and Modifying the Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan
You can only go so far in planning to ensure business continuity and disaster recovery, as you also need to regularly test and update your measures. Regularly reviewing your Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan aids in identifying new risks and assessing the effectiveness of your measures, while testing reveals areas where you can improve in mitigating downtime losses.
Colocation to a data center partner like Beeinfotech PH can drastically improve the disaster recovery plan since tasks and roles can be serviced by the provider. The model is a framework that extends to data center companies such as Beeinfotech PH the responsibilities of ensuring resiliency, including the testing and modifying of the Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan. With the data center partner’s expertise in IT, you can achieve better chances against risks in specialized areas such as cybersecurity.
The objectives of a Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan are to minimize losses and to provide continuous operations during disasters. By implementing these four aspects within your plan, your company can achieve both objectives, along with the ability to mitigate any other negative effects that downtime brings to companies.
For more information, visit https://www.beeinfotech.ph/ or you may send an email to info@beeinfotech.ph
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