Business Continuity Management: Maintaining Continuity in the Wake of an Emergency

Business Continuity (also known as Business Continuity Management) is a combination of strategies. It includes program design, facilitating policies, methodologies, and standards.  Procedures designed to automatically assist an organization in recovering from a catastrophic event are also included, ensuring a firm’s ability to continue operating without interruption, regardless of adverse circumstances or events. 

It’s not helpful once tragedy has incapacitated your business. Implement a Business Continuity Services plan before catastrophe strikes.  

Anticipating and planning for business continuity ahead of time ensures a company can continue providing services, maintain its consistency, and be able to recover more easily and quickly. 

Here are some helpful questions you can ask to get started planning a strategy for your business. These questions are designed to help you understand the implications your business might face if your company doesn’t already have a Business Continuity plan in place. 

How effortless would it be for your company to recover if a tragedy strikes, and your critical data is lost?  

• Would your business be able to continue operating if your data was lost, or would you have to shut your business down until you got it back – assuming you could get it back? Or would you have to close your business for good? 

• How much time do you think it would take to recover?  

• How much money would you lose during the recovery time? 

• How would your employees be able to stay productive? How long would you be able to continue paying salaries if the business was closed, and for how long? 

• Will your clients continue trusting your business with their precious data once disaster strikes? 

These are concerns that your contingency plan aims to answer. Once you consider them, you’ll understand how your business might be affected during an emergency. In addition, you’ll be better equipped to make the right decisions for how to handle the emergency for

your company. Anticipate these problems before tragedy strikes. Don’t wait until after disaster strikes or you’ll waste precious time getting your business back up and running. 

One of the first strategies we recommend is a data backup solution. This is a proactive solution for optimizing your business continuity management and disaster recovery plan. 

Correlation between Business Continuity Management and Data Backup 

Backing up your data is an important aspect of any business continuity plan. However, this is only one aspect and the first step in business continuity services.The other areas that must be considered are the broader infrastructure of your IT network, plus your work culture, workforce, and organizational policies. 

Are Business Continuity and Data Recovery Interchangeable terms? 

Business continuity and disaster recovery can rightfully be said to represent two sides of the same coin, corresponding to the period before and after data loss.  

While business continuity management refers to your plans and strategies for preventing data loss, disaster recovery is your strategy for dealing with the problem once it arises. 

A disaster recovery strategy should outline all the actions involved in recovering data from a backup location. 

Understanding that your data can be backed up is merely the first step in responding to a calamity. You should know how to access and restore your data as fast as possible and ensure that your data is securely backed up to an off-site server. 

• Is your data physically stored somewhere else? 
• Who will gather the data? 

• Can your data be accessed remotely? 
• Who has security privileges and access to the data? 

You’ll also want to know how long the recovery procedure will take. This will help you strategize to minimize downtime. Understanding how much time your company can go without accessing its data and knowing how long it will take to restore it, will help you determine how you should implement your disaster recovery strategy once data loss occurs. 

Prepare Today Establish a Business Continuity Management Program

You can’t afford to wait until tomorrow. You need a business continuity plan now! Sandra Network offers Data Recovery Backup Plans and Business Continuity Services that shield your system against data loss so downtime is reduced and moderated enabling you and your employees to get up and running as quickly as possible without comprising productivity.   

Contact us today to learn more about action plans and start establishing a strategy for your business.