Is your Organization Ready when Disaster Strikes?

June 18, 2021

It is not a matter if a disaster will strike but when it will strike.  Ransomware attacks, phishing, password attacks, weather, or other types of disasters can shut down or severely impact the backbone of your business – information technology (IT).  Most organizations have an IT disaster recovery (DR) plan in place; however, the plan may not provide the anticipated results when a disaster occurs.  Implementing a robust Business Continuity Management (BCM) program can minimize the impact on your organization.

A successful BCM program includes four areas, with specific activities in each and overseen by governance and program management: 

1. Crisis and emergency management 
2. Business continuity 
3. Disaster recovery 
4. Third-party risk and contingency management 

A BCM program provides the foundation to coordinate, facilitate and execute activities to ensure effectiveness in: 

• Identifying and continuously monitoring operational risks — including internal and external dependencies — and their impacts over time. 
• Proactively implementing appropriate risk mitigation controls – keep abreast of current risks and threats (both internally and externally). 
• Implementing response, recovery, and restoration strategies, solutions, and plans –determine the organization’s recovery priorities and critical resources and reevaluate as changes in the environment occur. 
• Establishing command and control of crisis event responses – determine the organization’s “spokesperson,” including crisis communications. 
• Debriefing after an exercise or disaster to improve recovery strategies, solutions, plans, and procedures improve the organization’s operational resilience and updates the plans and procedures to apply lessons learned. 

Implementing a BCM program can decrease downtime, lower recovery costs, and lessen data losses when a disaster occurs. It can also keep your most valuable resource – client confidence and data – from impact. Since over 40% of businesses never recover from a disaster, having a BCM program in place will make sure your organization does not become part of the statistic.  Dewpoint consultants can help you design and implement a disaster recovery plan or entire BCM program.  In addition, they can provide an independent review of your current plan to identify gaps and decrease risk.  So contact Dewpoint today before disaster strikes.