Nobody wants an IT disaster to strike their business, and most entrepreneurs will be lucky enough not to experience any major problems in the IT department, but there is no denying that a lot of companies will. We’ve all seen the news stories about huge corporations that have their data hacked or their operations brought to a standstill be ransomware and they are scary.
That’s why you need to have an IT disaster plan in place, and why you need to cover these specific things in it:
Threat Analysis
First and foremost, you need to have an analysis of every possible threat that could strike the IT side of your business and a list of every possible action you could take should they occur. It might take some time, and a few very good IIT experts, like the ones at Zenworks to get this in place. But you’ll be glad that you did should you experience an IT-related disaster. The quicker you can act, the less damage it is likely to do to your business.
Business Impact Analysis
It is also sensible to conduct a Business Impact Analysis to work out the impact that various issues could have on your company if the worst was to happen. This analysis should take into account not only IT infrastructure but also effects on business finances, employee safety, data breaches and reputation.
Once you know what impact various scenarios are likely to have, you can work out which actions are most important – should you call Data First Data Recovery to retrieve lost data first or should you be more worried about getting your servers back up and running, for example? If you know this, and other things like it, then you will have a much easier time of controlling any IT disaster.
Your Employees
So many companies spend so much time focusing on the tech that they don’t even consider their employees in their IT disaster plans. This is a huge mistake because your employees will need to be able to mobilise and help you get things back on track when disaster strikes. With that in mind, you’ll want to ensure that you have the right staff on hand, all of your employees know what to do in every scenario that could happen, and that you have best practices in place to stop your staff from causing disasters in the first place via data leaks or careless behaviour.
Regular Updates
Technology changes so fast that you need to include regularly scheduled updates to your It disaster plans so that you can identify any areas where there has been sufficient change to require new practices. If you fail to do this, then, if an IT disaster does strike your business, you might not be equipped to handle it. I don’t need to tell you that that would be a complete disaster.
If you include all of these things in your IT disaster plan, if you are hit by a cyber attack or your IT infrastructure grinds to a halt, you won’t need to panic – you can deal with the situation calmly, with a cool head, ensuring that as little damage as possible is done.
Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.