Is your organization prepared to handle unexpected technology failures?
The recent CrowdStrike incident has reminded business leaders of the massive potential for disruption when a critical technology component malfunctions or becomes unavailable. The impact isn’t limited to security tools like CrowdStrike: Imagine the impact to a business if a credit card payment processor goes down, or if a critical data center has an outage.
Regardless of the system or root cause, organizations need to be prepared to respond and recover quickly from a disruption. And in the recent CrowdStrike example, the existence of a documented, well understood, and actionable plan was likely the difference between getting back to business quickly or being dragged in the news for service interruptions.
At West Monroe, we believe in two key principles for improving recovery from an incident or disaster:
Business continuity planning, which defines the approach for keeping the business operating in a degraded state;
Disaster recovery planning, which defines how the business recovers, drawing heavily on details from the business continuity plan and is often more technology focused.
When it comes to business continuity planning, organizations should keep the following best practices in mind:
Once a business continuity framework is in place, those details can inform a disaster recovery plan, which should:
With defined plans, clearly understood expectations, and documented recovery processes, organizations are in a much better position to swiftly respond to an incident, maintain business operations, and recover as quickly as possible. West Monroe has seen firsthand that companies that invest in resilient operations are able to quickly mitigate the impact of a disruption, while those without pre-defined plans struggle to determine the actions that should be taken.
If your organization needs assistance with preparing business continuity or disaster recovery programs and plans, West Monroe can help. From conducting rapid business impact analysis to assistance in documenting plans, to developing and testing business continuity and disaster recovery scenarios, West Monroe’s team of resilience and industry experts can help you quicky enhance your business’ operational resilience and ultimately reduce risk.