While most businesses know the significance of a continuity plan, very few know how to implement one. Having a business continuity plan is crucial for mitigating risks, protecting your firm’s financial assets, and reducing the down time in an unplanned disruption. 

Below, we’ll cover the key components of a successful business plan, and best practices for achieving each component. 

1. Ensure the plan is consistent and accessible.

You can create all the documentation in the world, but it means nothing unless you’re able to access it when disaster strikes. Should a disaster occur, all stakeholders must be able to find this information quickly. Whether you’re creating documents in Word, Excel, or other applications, make sure they are stored in one central location. This could be on the cloud, in physical paper files, or in a DR planning system. 

2. Keep your data centers spread out.

If your primary data center is in Atlanta, don’t build a backup center 20 miles away. Historically, the worst disasters happen in areas where data centers exist close to each other. Make sure you are maintaining critical data and services in an area far away (a good rule of thumb is 150 miles). 

3. Consistently update your plan.

A good business continuity plan doesn’t end at creation. In fact, it should be updated frequently and used as a reference as the business evolves. A lot can change from the time a plan is created to the moment a disaster strikes. For example, maybe your business has implemented a new cloud based application. Failure to include this in your plan would mean all your hard work goes to waste. 

4. Test out the plan.

You should never go into a plan blind. It’s important to factor in all potential threats, and what steps are put in place to combat them. This can prove difficult however, as there are far too many ways a disaster can strike. For example, the problem can be as small as a process failure, or your entire facility could be wiped out by a catastrophic storm. Either way, it’s important to be prepared for any situation. Testing out these scenarios will also be good practice for disaster recovery, and can help reduce the amount of down time should a disaster occur. 

5. Find an expert to help.

Our best piece of advice for maintaining business continuity is to seek out professional help. This is a big task to handle, and one that most organizations don’t have the capacity for. 

At Thinline Technologies, our business continuity solutions stand ready to help all organizations examine their current solution. We work to implement comprehensive solutions like off-site data backups, server virtualization, managed data backup and more. Contact us today to get started.