Between customers, partners, employees, and more, stakeholders are trusting and relying on your business to stay operationally resilient, even during unexpected events. And, your responsibility doesn’t stop there: it’s up to your organization to understand and mitigate the top business continuity risks that can put your operations, productivity, and bottom line in jeopardy.
In this article, we unpack critical business disruptors and their mitigation strategies, and how to effectively protect and ensure business continuity through your technology investments.
Risk 1: Cybersecurity Threats
Cybersecurity threats, including data breaches and ransomware attacks, represent some of the most pressing dangers your business can face. Even a partially successful invasion into your network could lead to permanent productivity, financial, and reputational damage, with the average data breach costing $4.88 million globally.
Mitigation Strategies
To ensure business continuity and data resilience in the current cyber landscape, you’ll need to do the following:
- Implement Robust Cybersecurity Measures: Use firewalls and encryption to keep data out of the wrong hands.
- Protect Sensitive Data Using Access Controls: If you’re storing data in a CRM or application, use the principle of Least Privileged Access to ensure that users only have access to the data they need to perform their duties.
- Conduct Regular Security Audits: Review your existing strategies to ensure they are adequate and that your team is adhering to company policy
- Maintain Updated Incident Response Plans: Have a clear, documented plan to bounce back from cyber incidents
You’ll also need to invest in your team members. They can be your greatest asset or weakest link in the cybersecurity battle and you need to make sure they fall into that first category.
Risk 2: Natural Disasters
Natural disasters can cause severe operational disruptions and damage to physical assets. If your business is located in an area prone to catastrophic events, such as hurricanes and floods, it’s important to prepare thoroughly to minimize the impact of these incidents. Never fall prey to the “It won’t happen to us.” mindset; every region of the country faces at least some level of risk of natural disaster, so you need to be ready.
Mitigation Strategies
To ensure business continuity in the face of a natural disaster, consider these strategies:
- Develop a Comprehensive Disaster Recovery Plan: Outline your response to and recovery from various disaster scenarios
- Use Cloud Storage to Back Up Critical Data: Ensure essential business information is safely stored offsite and easily accessible
- Invest in Business Insurance for Disaster-Related Losses: Protect your organization’s finances by securing appropriate coverage
Ultimately, you must view the natural disaster issue as a question of when something will happen, not if.
Employer-employee relationships need to be mutually beneficial, especially when your organization is facing a talent crunch. If workers have many options, they’re bound to choose the company that provides them with the best combination of benefits and opportunities and a work-life balance.
Risk 3: IT System Failures
IT systems are the backbone of modern businesses. If just one of your company’s major platforms went down for a couple of hours, your productivity would likely nosedive. The good news, though, is that you can mitigate the risks of a major failure with a proactive approach.
Mitigation Strategies
To ensure business continuity amid a major IT system failure, you must:
- Maintain Regular Update and IT Infrastructure: Guarantee your systems are up-to-date
- Use Redundant Systems to Provide Continuity: Backup servers and other redundancies drastically decrease the risk of a catastrophic failure and bolster data resiliency.
- Monitor Systems Proactively: Use tools to detect and resolve issues before they escalate
- Understand Your Responsibility Under the Shared Responsibility Model: If your data is with a cloud provider, learn what aspects of continuity and data resilience are the SaaS provider’s responsibility and what aspects are your responsibility. If both are not working together, the data can be left vulnerable.
Most importantly, don’t postpone any technology overhauls your business has been planning. Even if you have to roll out the new technology in phases, start as soon as it is practical.
Risk 4: Regulatory Changes
New and evolving regulations can require adjustments to your policies and reporting practices. Non-compliance can lead to fines and reputational damage.
Mitigation Strategies
To ensure business continuity amidst regulatory changes, your organization should do the following:
- Stay Informed: Keep up with any changes relevant to your sector by subscribing to publications and attending industry events
- Work With Compliance Experts: Partner with professionals to adapt to complex regulatory environments
- View Flexibility as a Necessity: Design processes that can be modified with minimal disruption
While data compliance laws and regulations require strict adherence, your organization can build flexibility into your operations to seamlessly stay on the right side of compliance.
Ensure Business Continuity with Own
Alleviating the risks that your organization faces requires a proactive approach. Own from Salesforce protects businesses with data backup and data security solutions, ensuring secure, accessible, and recoverable data. Our solutions help you identify security risks before they happen, with proactive notifications of loss or corruption and easy-to-use recovery tools to resume business operations.
Schedule a demo with us today to ensure business continuity.
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