Business Continuity Preparedness During Coronavirus
The coronavirus outbreak has forced unique challenges for organizations worldwide. Disruptions like these can damage your business, your employees and your clients. Day-to-day operations are shifting quickly as teams go remote, and it’s critical that every company is prepared and focused on business resilience. Even as regular protocols and policies evolve, flexibility can enable you to maintain your operations with no lapses in service or lengthy RPOs.
Your business has many parts, so you’ll probably need to implement plans based on different user groups, business units, locations and regions. You know your business best, so you should fully understand the complexities of your organization and every department that is impacted by upheaval.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- Who are your essential users?
- What systems are needed for people to access their jobs?
- What is the backup plan?
The ivision team has developed a list of IT considerations and guidelines for making the transition to remote work. While the list is not exhaustive, it should serve as a starting point for achieving readiness in a short time frame.
Assess your remote capabilities
Utilize a cloud-based unified communications system, such as Webex Teams or Microsoft Teams, to facilitate more remote work.
You may need more infrastructure and teleworking support during this time. Consider adding a scalable public, private and/or hybrid solution to meet current and future needs for increased accessibility and flexibility.
Evaluate your IT operations. Are they comprehensive enough to offer around-the-clock support for the organization? Conduct a thorough analysis to assess business functions and processes that need to remain operational – and procure the critical hardware and software needed.
Know your storage, bandwidth, and capacity needs. Think about what you have available to facilitate a drastic change in remote access to your network and determine if you need to increase your capacity.
Focus on cybersecurity
Scale your security needs. Are you adequately prepared for the increase in remote workers? Remember to address issues such as renewing credentials, connecting to the corporate VPN, and multifactor authentication to protect remote worker connections?
Establish best security practices for remote employees. This is similar to advising your employees on how to work from home over the holidays. Offer guidance to supplement your regular security awareness training on performing software updates, connecting to the VPN and using personal devices.
Speaking of devices, determine how you will manage increased BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). Ensure you can secure company data on employee personal devices. Moreover, when an end-user is attacked, make sure you can isolate them from the network to prevent additional harm.
Have a disaster recovery plan that you can fall back on for failover, backup and recovery. Data loss and business disruption events can come from many sources. You need a strong monitoring and alerting system and seamless failover plan that is in place and tested to protect your business.
Prepare your people
People are the most important asset for most organizations. Communicate with your employees frequently, train them thoroughly, and make them part of your recovery plan.
Be proactive about risk management. Continually train employees – all of them, not just the IT team – on how to securely work from home and avoid targeted security threats. Managing your reputation is critical and can be assisted through careful training.
Know what employees need to have a productive and enjoyable teleworking experience. Conducting business online may be a huge shift for many team members. Prepare to support them accordingly.
Business Continuity Support
Serving our clients and community in times of huge transformation is fundamental to who we are at ivision, but we know this is an unprecedented and stressful time for everyone. Not every organization is set up to handle the dramatic transition to a remote workforce.
Let us know if there are any challenges within your organization that require assistance. We are here to help keep your systems running smoothly – and your teams healthy and not overburdened. Our staff is available to meet your cost optimization planning, consulting or product procurement needs. We can also quickly roll you over into a managed services environment if you need after-hours or solution-specific support for your team.
