Create A Solid Business Continuity Plan

Create A Solid Business Continuity Plan

Disaster always seems to hit us when we least expect it, which is why you need business continuity.

With the various disasters that continue to occur, this has proven to us that no business or organization can truly afford to think that an emergency will never have an impact on their livelihood and their business operations.

Business continuity planning has become a huge priority for many businesses. Many of the business continuity plans that are created do not have the proper tools and resources to ensure that their business operations will be able to continue even after a disaster strikes.

Outline Your Threats

When a business continuity plan is created, the business leaders have to start by evaluating their environment and carefully analyzing any potential risks they may face. We suggest that you create a full list of potential threats that your business can face.

Once you have carefully outlined the potential risks, we recommend that you place the risks in categories according to the equipment and systems that can be impacted.

When you consider all the possible problems you may face, your business will have a better opportunity to deal with the issues before anything actually occurs and before any damage is done.

Meet Your Business Standards

It can be very easy for a business to overlook this part of the process because there are various other things that will need to be completed. The standards that have been set by your industry will be a great template for your business continuity strategy.

Using your business’s industry standards as a framework will give you a better chance of passing any audits in the future. You will also have a greater chance of meeting on the compliance requirements that have been set for your industry.

Once you have created a business continuity strategy you think is good enough for your business, it is important that you remember to test the strategy. You cannot stop once you have created the strategy; it is essential that you make sure the strategy undergoes testing and revisions as needed.

You want to make sure your business operations can continue in the event of an emergency or a disaster. When your strategy works, this will mean that workers can work remotely and still access important business information.

Business continuity planning should be a top priority for your business.

Do you have the right proper systems in place?

Does your plan align with your business standards?

If you need to create a solid business continuity plan please do not hesitate to contact us today.

Is Your Business Ready for Investors to Take a Closer Look?

Is Your Business Ready for Investors to Take a Closer Look?

Investors rarely care about the nature of your business, they care if you’re business ready.

They might not even care about the long-term profitability of your business. What they want to know is how quickly they’re going to get their money back and what type of return they should be expecting.

In their search to find the hard answers, there are a few things that they look for. If you have these elements, they know you’re serious and your business is likely to be reliable.

If you don’t have them, each missing element is a red flag.

Do you have data backup?

Every business runs on data, regardless of the niche or services, customer contact information, audit records, employee data, and license specs. The more data you have, and the more you can do with the data, the better your business will consistently run.

But investors want to know what you’ll do if part of that data ever gets corrupted or disappears. If part of the profit evaporates with it, then your business isn’t safe. So make sure your data is backed up on either a dedicated server or the cloud.

Many businesses streamline their backups by having intermittent recovery points, when all of the information in the system is downloaded as it is, as well as daily storage that captures smaller changes in in-progress work.

Multiple recovery points help mitigate common corruption errors that slowly degrade data over time because of computer glitches that can’t be caught.

Do you have business continuity and disaster recovery plans?

These are two different plans. One is about how you plan on having business operations continue in the middle of an emergency or major malfunction, while the other details how you’re going to get all the systems and data back to peak performance again.

If you don’t have these plans, investors will think you’re not prepared for problems. Make sure you have plans that are detailed enough that any employee can open the plan and know exactly what to do.

If you want to make your network stronger and your business ready for investors contact us.

Building a Disaster Recovery Plan for HIPAA Compliance

Building a Disaster Recovery Plan for HIPAA Compliance

If your business needs to follow the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996’s, or HIPAA’s, requirements, then you need to have a disaster recovery plan. Many small companies accidentally conflate the ideas of a business continuity plan and a disaster recovery plan. Keep the two separate and stay in compliance.

What is the difference between business continuity and disaster recovery?

Both of the two plans have similar circumstances and preparation work. They outline the procedures you have in place to keep backup data safe and ready to use in the event of an emergency, and they both have action steps for when they are triggered.

But they also serve different purposes: a business continuity plan outlines how to keep your company moving during an ongoing emergency while a disaster recovery plan outlines how your IT department will bring the backup data securely to the forefront. One is about keeping the network as undamaged as possible while the other is about repairing damaged data stores.

How can you build a robust disaster recovery plan?

Different companies use different strategies. Before you get stuck with too many options and not enough specifics online, follow these steps:

Ask your IT support company

While IT support companies can’t tell you what other businesses in your state and industry are doing, they know what every plan should include. Tap into their advice (and possible templates) so you know your plan is compliant and competitive with other plans.

Go to Health Resources & Services Administration directly

If you don’t know what your plan and cybersecurity requirements are, it’s harder to stay compliant. Even as you use other resources to pull a plan together, find what HIPAA has to say word-for-word.

If you want to get started building out your disaster recovery plan, contact us.