Is business continuity among your top concerns as a business owner? If not, you need to re-evaluate your priorities and make sure that business continuity is ranked top among your concerns. Over the years, businesses of all sizes have been facing challenges in their operating environment, some of which have threatened their continuity. With malicious hackers on the rampage and disasters occurring around every corner (both manmade and natural), it’s important to ensure that you have secured business continuity. One way of doing this is by contracting a managed IT services provider in Atlanta offering business continuity services.
What is Business Continuity?
Business continuity is best defined as the planning that goes into ensuring that a firm can continue operating in the event that it suffers a blow from disasters and ensures that the business recovers to an operational state in the shortest time possible.
Why is Business Continuity Important?
Managed IT services providers in Atlanta help businesses avoid prolonged and unnecessary downtime by helping them come up with a plan that will ensure they resume operations within the shortest time possible.
Elements of a Quality Business Continuity Plan
Having seen the importance of a business continuity plan, you too can benefit from such an important plan. Here are three key things that your business continuity plan should have:
1. Include Each Department
Don’t make the mistake that some business owners make by focusing on the IT department only. Remember, when disaster strikes, all departments in your firm will be affected. Therefore, it’s important to include them and their views and opinions in the process of formulating your plan. Including them in this plan will promote buy-in and they’ll be ready to rally behind you and execute the plan when called upon without any hesitations.
2. Practice, Practice, Practice
The reason firms conduct fire drills is so that they can see how effective the plan is. During such drills, the management also gets an opportunity to evaluate the plan and check if there are areas that need improvement. The same drills need to be conducted to access the effectiveness of your business continuity plan. This will give you an idea of how long it would take for various departments to react to the disaster. Based on your findings, you can then look for ways to improve the system.
3. The 3-2-1 Data Recovery Rule
You need to ensure that your data is backed up automatically and regularly. Accordingly, this can be achieved by having at least three backups of your corporate data. Two of the backups should be stored on media such as USB drive, external hard drive, and server. One of the backups should be stored off-site in the cloud.
Parting Shot
Convinced of the importance of having a business continuity plan? If so, speak to us at MIS Solutions, Inc. We’re a managed IT services provider in Atlanta keen on helping our clients come up with business continuity plans tailored to meet the needs of their firms. Contact us today and let us help you plan for your business continuity.