Business Continuity Blog

You’ve probably heard that knowledge means nothing if the person doesn’t apply it to their everyday life. Believe it or not, the same can be said for having a disaster continuity plan. Many businesses know just how important it is to be prepared, but the problem is that they’re not using their knowledge effectively. Most business disasters are unique, and it’s important that each one’s handled differently. For example, you wouldn’t deal with a power outage the same way you would handle a natural disaster. The former might cause a loss of data, but the latter could actually impact or even destroy the building itself. When creating a disaster continuity plan, what should you keep in mind?

It’s no secret that we believe in the importance of disaster preparedness at every organization. But what does that planning actually look like when it’s put to the test in a real-world scenario? Today, we look at 4 business continuity examples to show how organizations have worked to minimize downtime (or not) after critical events.

Choosing the right business continuity providers will ensure that your business can rapidly recover after a critical event. But with so many different companies that provide business continuity services, the choices can be overwhelming.

In the finance industry, disasters are especially dangerous. Disruptions to a single bank’s operations have the power to tarnish the brand and disrupt entire markets. Data losses can compromise the financial information of thousands of customers. To avert these scenarios, a bank business continuity plan must account for every disaster possible, along with the proper protocols.

As a small business owner or manager, you realize that downtime is measured not just in hours and days, but also in lost revenue and lost opportunities. That’s why when a disaster of some kind hits your company and your operations are down, your primary concern (after the safety of employees and any others who might be affected) will be the question: when can we be up and running again? The answer to that question will depend, in large part, on how quickly you planned to be able to resume operations after a disruption. That’s why your disaster recovery plan (DRP) should be based on a disaster recovery RTO that is appropriate for your particular business functions and IT infrastructure.

When disaster strikes a manufacturing operation, production comes screeching to a halt. And with every minute of downtime that goes by, you lose more money. To help you prepare for the unexpected, we’ve put together this Manufacturing Disaster Recovery Plan Template, which outlines the organizational steps you’ll need to take, both before and after an emergency occurs.

Email is important to any business, and it’s never more important than when things go badly wrong. Customers and partners want to know what the situation is and how soon things will be back to normal.

A disaster recovery plan needs to set priorities for restoring service. Email needs to be near the top of the list, so that communication isn’t disrupted any longer than necessary. Email disaster recovery has three aspects that you need to know.

You’ve worked hard to build up your business, and it’s growing. The future looks bright. Then you get the news every small business owner or manager dreads – there’s been a fire, or a flood, or perhaps a tornado, or even an earthquake. Whatever the reason, your place of business has been rendered unusable, and for the moment at least, your entire operation has come to a halt. You need to know what makes up a killer business continuity plan.

Preparing for an IT disaster is crucial for every business. But not all disaster recovery providers are made equal. As you compare your options, it’s important to consider the stark differences between various backup recovery technologies: how they work, how rapidly they restore your data and of course: how much they cost.

We are living in a volatile time when virtually anything could happen. Whether it’s a man-made incident, or a natural disaster, you have to consider your business could shut down for days in worst case scenarios. In the meantime, do you have any method of keeping your business going so you don’t face the severe reality of downtime?

Years ago it was common for hospitals and other HIPAA compliant health care organizations to focus on their daily operations instead of a disaster plan. Now, more leaders want to prepare a disaster recovery plan beforehand that will restore and protect their patient’s data during a natural disaster or system failure. Below are three detailed reasons why you should develop a HIPAA disaster recovery plan.

When a computer virus infected the IT systems of a UK hospital group in November 2016, the group was forced to halt operations at three hospitals. For five excruciating days, the hospitals turned patients away while they shut down their systems to isolate and remove the virus. According to a report in Computing.co.uk, some experts now speculate there may not have been a hospital business continuity plan in place that would have helped to keep the facilities running during the disaster.

What you need to know about disaster recovery objectives Being prepared for serious mishaps in a business's data processing operations requires a solid disaster recovery plan. Making sure it's an adequate one is a complex task. A key step is to define specific...

A tornado will strike your office at 8:37 tonight. Will your business be up and running again tomorrow? If you haven’t planned for a worst-case scenario, the answer is no: not tomorrow and possibly not ever. We’ve created this simple checklist for disaster recovery plans to help you plan for how you’ll restore your operations after a disaster.

There are local and off-site elements of a disaster recovery management plan that need to be considered. Find out everything you need to know here.

What does business continuity in higher education look like today? At a time when colleges and universities are more reliant than ever on IT, it’s critical for administrators to place greater focus on securing their schools’ networks and data.

A disaster that puts a business offline can destroy it. A fire, flood, or theft can interrupt its activities so long that it never recovers. To avoid this scenario, it’s necessary to have a disaster recovery plan to maintain business continuity. It needs to specify how the business will keep its data safe and how it will restore it. Besides this, it needs one more “how”: How long will it take to restore functionality?

If your disaster recovery protocols don’t have safeguards for the technology and data that make your company run, then you’re leaving the business at risk. In fact, manufacturing can be even more vulnerable than other types of businesses.

A business continuity plan is a detailed document describing how a business will restore its essential functions as soon as possible in the event of a disaster. If your business experiences some type of disaster, you owe it to your customers and stakeholders to get up and running with minimal disruption as soon as possible. According to TechTarget, when auditing a business continuity plan, the goal should be to “determine whether the plan is effective and in line with the company’s objectives.” A good audit will identify weaknesses in the business continuity plan and suggest ways in which it can be improved.