How to identify threats that can disrupt your business December 27, 2017

When you start a business, optimism is the fuel that powers your entrepreneurial spirit otherwise you would constantly be worried about whether your business is going to make it or not. However, too much optimism can have dire effects on your business and land you into trouble.

A business that is looking too much into the best case scenario regarding finances or business structure is like a house of cards that can take a tumble at any time. The senior management team will be the first to manage risk if anything was to become an issue. Most of them would have completed their business continuity management training which will give them the training required to deal with any issues.

What are the different threats that can disrupt your business?

Cyber attack
Data breach by employee
Adverse weather
Fire
Terrorist attack
Unplanned IT and Telecom outages

What is a business continuity plan?

You can identify the threats by keeping a resilient infrastructure with the various disasters in mind and creating a continuity plan.

The most basic business continuity requirement is to keep all the important functions up and running if there was a disaster to occur with as little downtime as possible. Various staff members will first complete a business continuity course and then embark on a business continuity training which will show them practically how to act in various unpredictable events. These events can be natural disasters, cyberattacks or even a fire. It is important for organisations whether they are a small or large company to always have a practical solution if anything was to happen.

There are many different ways companies can prepare for a natural disaster or a cyberattack such as to have a failover mechanism in place to ensure that all the systems, networks and databases are always accessible. The failover mechanism is constantly running in the background as a secondary system and will come into place once the first processor is not working or has broken down.

There have been a lot of cyber-attacks in recent months where criminals are encrypting all the documents and leaving a ransom note. They would require payment to decrypt the files which has have a detrimental effect on the business. There are technologies out there to prevent this such as Disk mirroring which allows organisations to maintain an up to date copies of date scattered in different geographic locations. This insures that you have constant access to your information regardless of any problems.

All companies need to have a contingency plan with different procedures in place for a variety of scenarios and can include the managers that will take up some responsibilities within the organisation. These responsibilities can include having emergency office space on standby and contacting third party vendors for assistance.

Struggling with your business continuity plan? Browse through the business continuity training course we have on offer.