The first of our three exciting Disaster Masterclass events took place at Blenheim Palace last week. We had some amazing speakers from organisations such as Datto and Microsoft (Vuzion). They spoke about the importance of preparing your business against a business disaster!
The threat landscape
Cybercrime and cyber-fraud is at an all-time-high and will only continue to increase. Microsoft, as a security vendor analyses 6.5 billion threat signals every single day. This led to the discovery of 5 billion threats detected on devices every month alone. Have you ever thought that this could easily be targeted at one of your business devices?
Worryingly, these threats put your business at risk of significant data and financial loss. Therefore, it’s important your business is prepared in case of a cyber disaster. The truth is, you don’t want to be part of the 60% of small businesses that go out of business as a result of a cyberattack.
Everyone agrees that it is vital that your business is well-educated and has the correct policies in place to protect against cyberattacks. For example, do your employees know how to spot a phishing email? Equally, do you have an adequate password policy with Multi-Factor-Authentication turned on?
An act of ‘God’ disaster
Additionally, experts have outlined the reasons why a company needs to have a business continuity solution. Heaven forbid, you may be unfortunate enough to experience a successful cyberattack, or an ‘act of God’ disaster. Posing the question, what would happen if your employees were unable to access any of their crucial data? This is especially important in relation to ransomware. If attackers hold your data to ransom and try and extort money for the data’s ‘safe return’, what would you do?
Business continuity systems
Having a business continuity system in place that continually backup your organisational data allows you to reduce this risk. Because you can simply restore access to your systems from a previous backup. This means you won’t find yourself in a position where you have to pay a ransom fee for your data. It also means that, with the help of your Managed IT Service Provider, the financial loss as a result of business downtime will be limited. With the right help, your business can quickly return to operation.
A crucial point was made at our disaster masterclass event was by Jack Cooke from Datto. He said that backup isn’t enough. If it takes your organisation weeks to spin your IT systems, then this backup is nowhere near enough mitigation against the risk. A safer solution would be a dynamic business continuity solution that enables you to continue to work even if the worst happened.
Finally, in order to be fully prepared against a cyber disaster it’s important to have fail-safes and mitigation methods outside of the technology. This, for example, means having a cybercrime insurance policy. Should all else fail, the right cyber insurance policy could protect you against some of the significant financial implications of a cyber disaster. Depending on business size and annual turnover, cyber insurance policies, can be available from as little as £1k.
Protecting your brand from a disaster
It’s also important to consider the impact a cyberattack or improper disaster planning could have on your business reputation and your brand. For example, how would your clients react to the knowledge that their private and confidential data has been accessed and potentially shared or sold on the Dark Web. Therefore, it’s important to have a crisis communication plan in place. This will help ensure your business is able to appropriately communicate the disaster to stakeholders and manage any negative press.
A Crisis Communication’s Plan will always be unique to each business, but when it comes to cyber related crisis communication, a fundamental element of all plans should include the reporting the incident to the relevant authorities – in most cases, Action Fraud. So regardless of your business’ industry or size, this all needs careful consideration and planning.
Disaster Masterclass round-up
Each layer of business protection has its own specific benefit. However, it is important to note that none of these methods are mutually exclusive. Because, having a data backup solution will allow you to maintain your business’s data but may not protect you from any downtime. Similarly, an insurance policy that covers financial loss, won’t be able to bring back your data. Therefore, all the experts agree and recommend combining these mitigation methods where possible. This will ensure your business is fully prepared in case of a disaster.
If you would like to discuss the topics within this disaster masterclass event, please get in touch today
