What is Business Continuity in the Tech Industry? Explained

What Is Business Continuity?

Business continuity is a concept every organisation needs to consider. Business continuity planning is a factor behind the success or failure of an organisation. It involves putting strategies in place to ensure your organisation can continue to operate effectively at all times.

After all, the cost of unexpected downtime and disruptions in a company can equal around £300,000 per hour for some global businesses (or £5,000 per minute).

Every company is dependent on a specific set of mission-critical tools, processes, and procedures. It is difficult to prepare for every potential issue which might disrupt your business operations. However, business continuity planning can help to minimise your risk.

In the technology industry, organisations need to respond quickly to sector evolutions. Business continuity is also important for new regulations, and changing customer demands quickly.

What Is Business Continuity in The Tech Industry and Why Is It Important?

Business continuity in the IT and tech industry is the process of preparing your company for any kind of unknown and potential disruption. It begins with identifying key processes and functions in the operation of your technology company. Crucial components responsible for running your business need to be clear first. Then, you can put "failover" mechanisms in place.

For instance, automated cloud storage systems can regularly upload critical data to a cloud computing environment. This prevents a computer failure from exposing key information. A disk mirroring strategy can maintain up-to-date data copies in geographically dispersed locations. This means that brands can continue to operate, even if one environment's technology fails.

Business continuity aims to protect businesses against "downtime". Alternatively, it also helps take care of the moments wherein the company is unable to function as normal. The right plans enable the organisation to continue running. This includes functioning at a minimal level, during times of crisis.

Business continuity helps companies to:

• Avoid the rising costs of unexpected downtime and continue earning revenue.
• Preserve company reputation and credibility.
• Save time on restarting business operations after a disaster.
• Maintain resiliency when faced with various business interruptions.
• Avoid losing the investment of important shareholders.
• Remain compliant with local and industry regulations.

What is Business Continuity Management?

Successful business continuity requires an organisation to evaluate its processes. Areas of weakness and potential issues on a global scale also need to assess. Finally, create strategies for maintaining strength.

Business continuity management involves building a specific plan of action for dealing with potential disasters. This plan of action, knows also as business continuity plan, can be implemented throughout the organisation.

As part of a business continuity management plan, a leader who are responsible for a business process attempt to predict the possible disruption before it happens. For instance, technology companies face a lot of threats around data management and protection.

Therefore, a business continuity plan may include identifying safe ways of storing data, and ensuring it can be accessed in a crisis.

What Does Business Continuity Plan Involve?

• Defining who will be responsible for which parts of a business continuity plan.
• Examining, auditing, and updating response plans based on the discovery of new threats.
• Creating policies for employees to follow in regard to business continuity.

Business Continuity Vs Disaster Recovery

Business continuity is often confused with a number of other defensive actions and response techniques used by companies to deal with disasters. For instance, you may believe "business continuity" and "disaster recovery" are the same thing. However, that is not the case.

While a disaster recovery plan is often an important part of a business continuity plan, it's not exactly the same concept. Business continuity involves creating an entire strategy to keep businesses operational during an unexpected event.

Disaster recovery, on the other hand, focuses on restoring access to critical infrastructure and tools following a disaster.

Business Continuity Vs Crisis Management

In some cases, people can also confuse business continuity with "crisis management". Once again, both of these concepts are focused on protecting a business process.

However, business continuity is a holistic process for identifying and responding to the potential impact of various risks. The objective here is to increase the resilience of the organisation and side-step disruptions.

Crisis management, however, is the process of coordinating an organization's response to a significant issue. It involves outlining exactly which team members need to be involved in dealing with a disaster. It also involves how they will be expected to act. The focus here is on protecting a company's reputation, profitability, and ability to operate.

Business Continuity With Regression Testing

One of the most crucial tools in a developer's toolbox is regression testing. Regression testing assures the stability of software services and applications. It is designed to make sure a solution can continue to operate normally as it evolves.

As a part ofbusiness continuity, product teams can quickly identify whether there is a problem with their code to maintain the end-user experience. This requires proper methodology. This procedure also lowers the possibility that extensive expansion plans may become unnecessary.

See top 10 regression testing tools can help you run your business functions run smoothly. They can also make your team's day-to-day tasks seamless.

Use Of Open Source Firewall To Ensure Business Continuity

In today's digital environment, the phrase "open source firewall" has become so widespread. Businesses are looking for more adaptable and practical ways to deploy high-level security. They do it to maintain business continuity.

Most businesses are aware that a firewall is a piece of software that restricts access to information that could harm a system. With an open-source solution, businesses can get software and source code for free. They can even modify the source code with the necessary developer skills.

It is an adaptable security tool that serves as a partition between internal and external networks. Companies in an open-source environment can download and use firewall technology that is supported by a flourishing developer community. Access to the firewall's core code guarantees that businesses can customise the security settings to suit their needs.

Learn more about how open-source firewalls can help your IT business grow.

How to Create a Business Continuity Plan?

The exact structure of your business continuity plan may differ for a number of reasons. For instance, it can depend on the unique security threats that your company may face. However, the general process of developing a business continuity plan usually involves some of the following steps:

Carry Out a Risk Assessment

Every business continuity plan begins with a risk assessment. This process involves evaluating your company and identifying the areas where it might be vulnerable. For instance, some of the most common "risks" businesses can look at include:

• Employees.
• Customers.
• Premises.
• Suppliers.
• Systems and processes.
• Business partners.
• Equipment and IT.
• Logistics.
• Legal compliance.
• Finances and cashflow.

It's often helpful to have multiple people in the business involved in a risk assessment, from various departments. This can help companies to pinpoint issues a single person may overlook.

Write a Business Continuity Plan

Following your risk assessment, you can begin to work on your "Business Continuity Plan". Your BCP will outline the major risks you face. It should also include what you plan to do if these issues influence your business.

For instance, if you're concerned there may be a chance employees will try to steal or misuse valuable data from your tech company, you can set up access controls to ensure only the right people can leverage certain information.

Your BCP should include ideas on how to avoid the risk, as well as what you're going to do if the disruption occurs. It's a good idea to outline which members of staff will be involved in responding to the issue too. For instance, if you have a problem with your IT equipment, you'll need to get your IT and financial staff involved in repairing the problem.

Communicate and Test

Finally, as a part of your business continuity planning, you'll need to communicate the details to your employees, and test to see whether your strategy works. You may want to rehearse responses to key areas by running simulations of potential issues.

For instance, you can show your employees how you would respond to a data breach in your business. You can simulate how a 'data loss' scenario to see how employees respond.

Rehearsing your responses to potential disasters will give you an opportunity to see any issues with your current plan. Finally, it will allow you to fix them before a disruption occurs.

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