Our world is becoming increasingly interconnected through technology. While technology enables us to do amazing things, it also comes with some business risks. As recent global Information Technology (IT) systems outages and power grid failures have shown us, it’s crucial to have a backup plan in case important technology falters or fails. As the effects of climate change continue, technological disruptions are likely to increase. These are the steps any organization should take to maintain resiliency in the digital age.
Analyze your Tech Stack
Risk management planning has become a crucial cornerstone of business as complexity and global marketplaces have grown. Fluidity is necessary when planning for risk response, as modern threats can be internal or external and may impact certain areas over others. The first step to managing potential IT systems issues is to identify key processes, threats, and risks.
Organizations often utilize multiple third-party software to deliver key services, which enable them to be more efficient, but also introduces interdependency and risks. Analyze your tech stack to identify vulnerabilities. Organizations should note which software and processes are most vital for conducting business and the levels of security or risk associated.
Design a Resilience Strategy
Design a dynamic resilience strategy grounded in proper controls, architecture, and backups to support your fundamental operations in the case of issues. The goal is to create a plan that can be quickly executed in a crisis to sustain core revenue-generating functions and recover other operations as soon as possible.
Disruptions happen, but how your organization responds can have either a positive or negative effect on reputation and customer trust. A resiliency plan will be one of the main factors that defines whether your consumers feel frustrated and abandoned during an operational disruption or supported and reassured. Your resiliency plan should include communication strategies to reach customers with information and timelines as you work through whatever issues arise.
Steps to Develop a Resilience Plan
While we always hope that large-scale software outages, power grid disruptions, and other problems don’t occur, every organization will face an operational disruption at one time or another. Here’s what your plan should look like in these less-than-ideal scenarios:
1. Develop a backup and recovery strategy for your unique tech stack
2. Document and test that plan regularly, ensuring that responsible parties are trained on their responsibilities in the event of an emergency
3. Define your recovery metrics and ensure that you can execute at scale
4. Plan for worst-case scenarios such as backup failures, loss of access to third-party servers and cloud environments, or loss of access to physical locations.
5. Forecast the potential damages of loss to key technologies or network breaches
6. Review software and third-party systems to avoid an overreliance on any one system
7. Evaluate business insurance coverage for security breaches or system outages
8. Create a process for client communication in the case of an issue and backup plans in case usual communication lines are disrupted.
An IT resiliency plan is a great step to help your organization prepare for operational disruptions, power outages, or network breaches. In a world facing increased natural disasters and power disruptions, it pays to be prepared. Organizations with a documented process for unusual circumstances will be most likely to thrive in the complex global environment.