Are Your Business Continuity Strategies Geared to Handle Emerging Threats?

Are you confident that your organization is ready to handle any threat — both now and in the future? Finding the right framework is vital to the long-term viability of your business.

Are you one of the one in three organizations that have not yet defined a comprehensive business continuity strategy? The threat landscape is shifting on a regular basis, making it challenging to predict where the next attack will originate. Prior years have been dominated by malware and email threats, causing corporations to expand their cybersecurity measures in these critical directions. It’s nearly impossible to predict the vectors for future attacks, but experts are making some assumptions around cryptojacking, IoT device risks, mobile malware and cross-site scripting (XSS). While these are all a consideration, what happens if your business is devastated by a natural disaster? The only way to ensure that your enterprise is protected against current and future threats is to create a business continuity strategy that is agile enough to quickly shift to cover most eventualities.

Why Do You Need a Business Continuity Plan?

With all the competing projects on your plate, you might question the need for developing a comprehensive business continuity strategy. Sure, this effort will take time and it will almost certainly pull attention away from other projects. There are no guarantees that you will ever use the plan. There are dozens of reasons to justify not putting for the effort, but the reasons to take the time are quite compelling:

Small businesses report the cost of IT downtime is more than $10,000 per hour

35% of data loss is caused by malware

More than a quarter of businesses lose revenue to IT outages

Hackers attack a business an average of every 39 seconds

33% of business leaders discovered that their business continuity strategy was inadequate — when they were unable to respond to a crisis

While this might be enough to encourage you to invest in creating a business continuity strategy, perhaps the most important metric to consider is this one: 96% of businesses that have a functional business continuity strategy in place are able to fully recover and maintain operations.

What Are Some Key Business Continuity Strategies?

Working through the process of defining proactive business continuity strategies requires the review of your current platforms, data storage and communication procedures. Business and technology teams work together to prioritize how to bring your business back to minimal operating standards — which platforms need to be resolved immediately and which can wait (and how long they can wait!), how to communicate with stakeholders and your customers and who to contact to begin remediation, to start. Identifying the potential threats and then creating a timeline for remediation raises awareness throughout the enterprise to ensure your team receives adequate funding to complete a business continuity planning project.

Protecting your organization is a prime directive for many IT leaders and decision-makers, but you can’t be successful without the right tools and skillsets in place. The professionals at Fuelled Networks offer leadership through defining your business continuity strategies to ensure you are taking full advantage of the platforms and solutions that are both cost-effective and sustainable for your enterprise. Our team works with corporations throughout the Ottawa, Kingston and Eastern Ontario region to define forward-thinking solutions for technical business challenges. Contact the Fuelled Networks experts at 613-828-1280 or schedule your free initial consultation online anytime.