Do You Have A Business Continuity Plan?

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Thirty per cent of business don’t!

At some point in the lifespan of any business, disaster will strike. It’s inevitable. From unsuspecting employees letting lose ruthless viruses, to something much less preventable, such as an electrical fire, any loss of data can be detrimental. The key component to managing any business is having a business continuity plan, so that when disaster recovery is needed, it’s only a phone call away.

In a previous post, we talked about the importance of data backup. Making sure your data is backed up in the proper mediums is fantastic but, having a plan with what to do once the system crashes is just as crucial as saving the data itself.

This is where the idea of business continuity comes into play. Having the ability to continue running your business during these emergency cases will minimize revenue loss, as every minute a server is down is a hit to the company.

There are many examples available of companies that were saved simply by having a backup plan in place, such as the one about Cantey Technology, who lost its entire operation to a lightning strike in 2013.

According to Tracy Rock, InvenioIT.com, the office building in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, was home to the IT company, which hosted servers for more than 200 clients.

The fire caused the entire network infrastructure to melt, burning cable and computer alike. With equipment destroyed beyond repair and an unusable office, a panic should have set about the entire organization. Instead, states Rock, Cantey’s clients had no idea.

As part of their business continuity plan, Cantey had already moved its clients servers to a remote data center, where continual backups were stored. Staff of Cantey were displaced in a temporary office, but no client experienced any disruption of service. Although Cantey Technology had no control over the force of nature, they were still able to avoid massive loss.

Businesses always believe it won’t happen to them, that the backups they have are enough, but the reality is, they aren’t.

According to InventoIT’s 2017 disaster recovery statistics, hardware failure was the leading cause of all unplanned downtime, with power outages accounting for an additional 35 per cent

Even with backups, if a company isn’t sure what to do once the power goes out, there is still unplanned downtime that adds up. Costing between $926 to $17,244 per minute, these numbers include lost revenue, lost productivity, recovery expenses, equipment replacement, and more.

The same statistic report mentioned that 30 per cent of businesses do not actually have a business continuity plan in place, and a portion of those companies haven’t even talked about it.

With the inevitability of a disaster strike, do you want to be apart of that 30 per cent?

If you are curious as to how much your business would lose in the event of a disaster you can input all your data into our online calculator. The results might shock you.

Understand cyber security, don’t fear it, says NCSC head

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The head of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has urged organisations to ensure they understand cyber risks as a survey reveals mid-sized firms have inadequate cyber protection.  MSP in the UK warning that investments in a security and information event management (Siem) system, without dedicated team to respond is inadequate.

Source: Understand cyber security, don’t fear it, says NCSC head

Cybersecurity is dead – long live cyber awareness | CSO Online

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Consider shifting the focus from exclusively on prevention and include a focus on recovery.

Ask youself, and your IT department:

  1. If you were hacked, what would you do?
  2. How frequently is your data backed up?
  3. Will you pay the ransom?
  4. What about the companies and people you work with?
  5. What’s your communication plan?

Read the full article from the link below.

Source: Cybersecurity is dead – long live cyber awareness | CSO Online

Cyber Security Awareness Month, Equifax, and You

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The month of October sure brings a lot to celebrate for us Canadians. Whether it’s feeling gratitude with family and friends while celebrating Thanksgiving or dressing up to celebrate Halloween by devouring all that sweet sweet candy during the whole month of November (or in 2 days….no one is judging). But if there is another celebration the month of October brings, it is for our hard working businesses to celebrate being ransomware free.

In fact, October is the National Cyber Security Awareness Month! What that really means is that all businesses should be taking a moment to evaluate whether their current solutions in place to combat ransom ware will keep their systems safe while keeping business running. This is particularly very important for the hard working small and mid-size businesses that operate lean and do not have dedicated in-house IT departments working 24/7.

But then again, sometimes even with dedicated in-house IT and billions of dollars, one fatal error in its cyber security practice can cause that company to become an example of what not to do when it comes to protecting your business, your customers and yourself. The company that all business owners can learn from in this instance is Equifax.

Equifax has been struggling with their data security breach that wreaked havoc within the company. Here’s what happened: cyber criminals attacked Equifax systems between mid-May and late July causing a data breach that affects 145.5 million people in the US and about 8000 Canadians.

So what went wrong? Clearly, a multi-billion dollar company like Equifax must have invested in the most robust of technology solutions available through their world-class IT services provider (in-house or external)…Well Equifax was alerted of a software breach in March 2017, however, according to former CEO Richard Smith, they failed to fix the issue due to “both human error and technology failures” that resulted in the data breach. Although a repair was released, Equifax failed to install it immediately, giving hackers an opening to break into Equifax’s computer systems.

And why is this a problem for a multibillion dollar company like Equifax? Surely, they can afford to pay their way out of it right?

Wrong. For Equifax, losing a chunk of money whether from offering free identity theft protection products/services to consumers, hiring lawyers to represent them in the legal battles, or through loss of future customers, may be just part of the problem. It is having to turn around the bad reputation and earning the trust of the public back is what will make things extremely difficult for Equifax in the future. Earning this trust may in fact be the worst of its problems.

So, the real question is, what are you as a small or mid-sized business doing to protect you and your customers? Are you being proactive in terms of monitoring your systems? Are your employee adequately trained to know what to do wtih potentially malicious email? If your answer is no or “I don’t know” to any of these, take action. Talk to your IT provider or contact us for a free 30 minute assessment.