Information technology blog, cybersecurity blog

Imagine the unthinkable: a cyber incident cripples your network, a natural disaster shuts down your office, or a critical system failure throws your operations into chaos. How will your business react?

Updated: 2024 Most business leaders don’t like to think about the possibility that disaster could strike their organization. But that doesn't eliminate the risk. Whether it’s a natural or man-made disaster, the ramifications can be equally damaging. At a minimum, disasters of either kind can cause downtime, damage to your reputation, and financial loss.

From natural disasters to cyber incidents, the unexpected can strike any business. Having a disaster recovery plan in place before disaster strikes can mean the difference between extended periods of downtime and a quick return to business as usual.

As a business leader, you know the importance of having your ducks in a row. Planning is essential for your business to succeed.

Editor's note: This article was originally posted in 2018, but has been updated to include the most current information.

Your senior network engineer just quit without warning. Or maybe a hacker penetrated your firewall. Or you’ve had a recent workforce reduction that’s affected your IT department.

The novel coronavirus pandemic has taught us several lessons already and there’s likely more to learn. We’ve learned the definition of essential businesses and personnel during a time of crisis, the term “social distancing”, which employees are able to perform their duties remotely, and more. We’ve also learned that pandemics need to be included in every organization’s business continuity/disaster recovery (BCDR) plan. If you already account for them in your business plan, kudos to you! I recently wrote about how to go about this for the Hartford Business Journal and have included more detail below. When putting together a BCDR plan, I think many of us focus on the more typical potential disasters that come to mind like weather, human, and data related incidents. When gathering my thoughts for this, I even subconsciously put pandemic last when listing out types of plans to consider making. Did you have a plan in place that’s helped get your business through this crisis?