The Dos and Don’ts of Creating an Effective Business Continuity Plan

Disruptions, from natural disasters to cyberattacks, can hit any business. A strong business continuity plan (BCP) is essential to protect your company, employees, and customers. It’s an investment that helps you handle the unexpected and get back on your feet quickly.

Here are the key dos and don’ts for building your plan.

The Dos

Here are five things you should consider doing to enhance your business’ continuity plan:

  • Assess your risks – Before you can plan, you need to understand the specific threats and vulnerabilities your business faces. A thorough risk assessment will help you prioritize what to prepare for.
  • Test your plan regularly – A plan that isn’t tested is useless. Conduct drills and simulations to identify gaps and ensure everyone knows their role in a crisis.
  • Include all employees – A BCP isn’t just for management. Every employee needs to know the protocols and communication channels to follow during an emergency.
  • Create a communication strategy – Clear, consistent communication is vital during a crisis. Establish how you’ll communicate with employees, customers, and partners using emergency channels and pre-approved messages.
  • Keep it current – Your business and its risks are always changing. Review and update your BCP at least once a year or after any significant changes to your business, such as new technology or key personnel.

The Don’ts

Conversely, there are some things you should never do. Here are five:

  • Don’t focus only on IT – A comprehensive plan should cover all aspects of your business, including physical infrastructure, human resources, and the supply chain—not just data and systems.
  • Don’t underestimate a disaster – It’s better to be over-prepared. Plan for a worst-case scenario, including a backup recovery site, in case your primary location is unusable.
  • Don’t rely on one person – Make sure every critical role has a backup. Your plan should have a line of succession and redundant roles in case a key employee is unavailable.
  • Don’t forget your partners – Your business depends on suppliers. Ensure they have their own continuity plans and have alternative vendors in mind.
  • Don’t improvise – A crisis is not the time to wing it. A detailed, step-by-step plan is crucial for minimizing downtime and getting your business back on track fast.

If your goal is to build a resilient business that’s ready to face any challenge with confidence, having a comprehensive business continuity strategy in place is one of the most important factors. If you would like help with your BCP and protecting your business’ assets in the face of serious consequences, give the IT professionals at White Mountain IT Services a call today at (603) 889-0800.

White Mountain IT

Related Posts

The Importance of Passwords Cannot Be Ignored

Passwords protect nearly all of your accounts; or at least you hope that they do. Unfortunately, making a super-secure password that’s easy to remember can be harder than people expect. Oftentimes, it feels like you are constantly solving a puzzle. So then, how do you create passwords that keep hackers out without driving yourself crazy? In this month’s newsletter, we discuss this very problem. ...

The Dangers of Double and Triple Extortion

Ransomware has emerged as one of the most dangerous modern threats to businesses, and when you consider just what’s at stake with a ransomware infection, you’ll realize we’re not exaggerating. The worst variants of ransomware will attempt to extort you through any means necessary, and when you don’t give in so easily, they’ll pull out the big guns: double and triple extortion. Double-Extortion ...

How to Keep Engagement Up (Even in a Remote or Hybrid Workplace)

Remote and hybrid work models have become more popular than ever, in no small part thanks to the improved technology businesses of all sizes can now access. Nevertheless, this shift has brought new challenges for organizations everywhere. One such challenge is maintaining and enhancing remote workplace engagement—a crucial aspect that directly impacts employee satisfaction, productivity, and reten...

Were 16 Billion Passwords Really Leaked? Kind Of… But the Lessons are Still Important

Fairly recently, news circulated that a data breach had exposed 16 billion—yes, with a “b”—passwords for various logins, including social media accounts, virtual private networks, corporate tools, and more. Effectively, every online service imaginable was represented in this breach. This is very bad… arguably unprecedented. However, this impression is at best misleading. Let’s dig into the truth...