Business Continuity Plan – THE ASSESSMENT

October 27, 2020 Kasha Ford Leave a comment Uncategorized

We last discussed the importance of having a Business Continuity Plan, along with the importance of regular assessments. Now, more than ever, it’s important to ensure your business processes will remain safe and viable irrespective of what may occur.  If you haven’t already, take advantage of our Business Continuity Assessment Quiz: https://univista.com/univista_dr_quiz/  If you need help answering any of these questions or making additional determinations, your UniVista Account Manager can help!

What are my Critical Business Functions?

To get started on your assessment you’ll first need to identify ALL your business’ critical functions.  Followed by rating each critical business function based on their importance in at least two critical areas:

What is your acceptable Maximum Data Loss?

You will need to decide how much backup data you can afford, or are willing, to lose. For example, If a disaster strikes at 11pm and your nightly backup isn’t scheduled until Midnight, your backup did not run… is this an acceptable amount of data loss to your organization?

What is your acceptable Maximum Time Loss?

Evaluate how long your business can be down before it becomes critically impacted. Is one day too long, maybe one week?… Whatever the acceptable time amount, determine a reasonable metric you feel is both reasonable to recover from, plus wont impact your overall business too severely.

Periodically evaluate and assess all your organizations critical business functions.

Assess your current backup situation…

Now that your better acquainted with what your critical business functions are, you can look at your current backup and recovery scenarios. Begin with an audit of your critical systems and their current backup scenario. It’s easy to determine what your critical systems are; they are the systems required by your critical busines functions. This list should include your phone system along with email to support customer communication, or your website to support online sales. Once you have your list, then consider and document 4 important questions about each system:

  • What is our location for backups?
  • Are both local and offsite backups included?
  • What is the retention period of EACH backup?
  • Who is your contact in the event a data recovery is needed?
  • Does my current backup scenario meet my Maximum Data Loss and Maximum Time Loss goals?
NOT SO FAST – you’re not quite done yet! After you initial assessment of critical business functions, you’ll need to assess other processes further.

Expect Surprises…..and quite a bit of work ahead.

If this is your first time through this process, I guarantee there will be surprises. Don’t worry, you are not alone. Everyone has a critical system, while though it may be thoroughly backed up, the recovery may take days and the potentially data loss may also be unacceptable.

How to make sense of your assessment?

If at any time during your audit or assessment you find yourself overwhelmed, or don’t know what processes to consider critical, please don’t hesitate to contact your UniVista Account Rep. Everyone needs a second set of eyes to doublecheck their work. UniVista is happy to help in any way we can.

If you don’t have time to get started, but you agree that business continuity is critical, then let us do it for you. After experiencing 2020 with all its challenges, we cannot stress strongly enough the importance of having a Business Continuity Plan IN PLACE for the inevitable.  Remember, as they say: when you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

BUSINESS CONTINUITY – Lessons from 2020

September 23, 2020 Kasha Ford Leave a comment Uncategorized

Even if we completely set aside the COVID-19 Pandemic as a once-in-a-lifetime anomaly and just reflect on what other lessons 2020 has taught us, a key lesson is the importance of a Business Continuity Plan.  In just the past few months wildfires have ravaged homes and business out West, an unprecedented double hurricane followed by flooding occurred in the Southeast, a derecho in the Midwest damaged an entire year’s worth of crops, and numerous organizations around the country have experienced the adverse effects of civil unrest and the ever present Cyber Attack danger. Businesses and organizations throughout the nation have been affected, some irreparably. Now, more than ever it’s critical to ensure your business’ survival with a solid Business Continuity Plan.

What is Business Continuity Planning?

Business Continuity Planning is a preventative process an organization undergoes to create a recovery system from potential threats, both manmade and natural disasters, or even cyber-attacks. A Business Continuity Plan is designed to protect personnel and assets, then make sure they can function quickly when disaster strikes.  Basically, a Business Continuity Plan helps an organization mitigate its downtime, and ultimately its losses, when an issue occurs.

We have addressed the importance of Business Continuity in past articles here:

The Ping: Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning
The Ping: Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning 101
The Ping: Initiating Your Disaster Recovery Plan
The Ping: Finalize and Maintain your Disaster Recovery Plan

Are You Prepared?

Irrespective of the challenges you and your business, or organization, are dealt, have you considered whether you’re adequately prepared?  Is your data infrastructure protected, is it safely accessible from anywhere? Are Cyber Security measures up to date?  Should something happen, could you continue operations and keep your business going? We are only at the tail end of Q3 for 2020, who knows what else will get thrown at us in Q4?

Every organization no matter how big or small needs to review their ability to operate when unexpected issues arise. If you already have a Business Continuity Plan in place and have for some time, great!  However, just having a plan isn’t enough. Regular, periodic reviews of your existing plan are important to identify and address any holes or new issues and threats. Take our Business Continuity Assessment Quiz to see how ready your organization is: https://univista.com/univista_dr_quiz/

If you’ve never considered a Business Continuity plan for your business, it’s critical to do so – NOW – and get something in place immediately.  Please contact your UniVista Account Manager to schedule a consultation to review your organization’s needs, we can help you implement an effective plan to help keep your business safe during challenging times.