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What happens if a cyber-attack shuts your systems down for days, weeks or even months? How are you going to contact your staff, stakeholders, suppliers and customers? What will be the most efficient way to get your operations back to business as usual? If you don’t have the answers this, then you don’t have a Business Continuity Plan.
Whilst you may not be able to predict every kind of event or incident that could occur, a Business Continuity Plan will help you prepare for and recover from the most likely events or incidents you could face. The lack of a Business Continuity Plan may have severe impacts on your business operations and could affect your financial viability and reputation.
If you’re still putting business continuity planning into the ‘too hard’ basket, here are 5 reasons why you should move it to the top of your priority list.
1. Minimise downtime
The primary purpose of a Business Continuity Plan is to minimise downtime. Whether you suffer from a natural disaster or a ransomware attack, the best way to stay in business is to continue business-as-usual operations as soon as possible.
2. Continue business-as-usual operations
Some Business Continuity Plans allow the business to continue business-as-usual operations during an incident by including back-up and recovery sites. These are off-site areas where critical business functions can operate from, regardless of damage or inaccessibility to the usual site.
3. Communicate confidently
In the event of an incident, you will want to establish order amongst the chaos. A Business Continuity Plan will outline a chain-of-command delegation of responsibility and outline reliable communication channels.
4. Compliance
Some industries require a business to have a well prepared and tested Business Continuity Plan to comply with industry regulations. Industries such as insurance may offer lower premiums for businesses with a robust plan.
5. Your reputation matters
When things go wrong, your shareholders, customers and the public will be watching very closely, and in the absence of information, they automatically assume the worst The speed and effectiveness of your response could make or break your reputation.
There’s no time like the present to prepare a Business Continuity Plan for your business or review your existing plan. If you need any help, reach out to our experienced consultants. Having helped hundreds of clients since 2005, we do know a thing or two about Business Continuity Planning, so start a conversation today.
