Video: Business continuity – protecting your organisation

When did you last test your business continuity plan?

Though some people find business continuity planning fascinating, most would probably admit it’s quite a long way down the list of things they would like to do with their time. But let’s assume you’ve been really organised and developed a companywide plan for how you will respond to an interruption to your day-to-day operations. For starters, well done, you’re already one step ahead of most of your competitors! But, if that plan was written 18 months ago and has since been sat gathering dust on the shelf of your server room, chances are it’s not quite up to the job.

Organisations change all the time. People come and go; suppliers get reviewed; new technology is implemented; key customers change. A business continuity plan is no different – it should change at the same pace as your business. It’s also no good unless the whole team knows how and when to implement it.

This short video will help you understand the basics of business continuity planning and the issues you should consider.

Video Transcript

“Hi, I am Dan May from ramsac. A lot of my customers ask me for help with business continuity planning. Planning for the unexpected can be tricky and all organisations need different elements in their plans. Today I am going to go over a very high level guide, to help you understand the basics to business continuity planning and to raise some of the issues you should consider.

So let’s jump in:
Who? – It is vital everyone understands their roles, so assign areas of responsibility and establish a chain of command [In addition, always have alternates in case an important person is not available]. Also ensure you have up to data contact information for all people and entities that you may need to contact in the event of a disaster.
What? – Start by analysing the potential threats, look at what is affected. Is it a fire that has affected your IT infrastructure or a flu pandemic that affects your people? Any plan should look at different threat types and deal with them accordingly.
Where? – Determine if you can deal with the issue onsite or do you need an alternative base of operations, where could this be? Can your employees work from home? Is your important data backed up off sit? Can you work in the cloud?
When? – We recommend checking your plan at least twice a year, carrying out emergency evacuation drills once a year and carrying out structured walk through and full risk assessment including reviewing the plan every other year.
Why? – To be successful it is important you know how to serve your customers regardless of external factors. A business continuity plan helps organisations stay running during natural disasters, economic downturns and bad publicity.
How? – your business continuity plan should be thought out, written down, and distributed to key personnel well ahead of any incident that could cause a disruption to your operations. Copies should also be stored off-site.
The main thing to remember is to focus on the ‘what’, not the ‘why’. To an extent it doesn’t really matter why the organisation has been affected. What’s important is what services are being interrupted and what needs to be recovered to try to cover as many eventualities as possible.

There is so much to business continuity planning, I don’t have time to cover it all in detail here today. If you are interested and would like some more information, get in touch and we can discuss your requirements.”