plan Archives · AE Technology Group

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No matter how prepared your business is, you still have a chance to become a victim of a cyber attack. Even with advanced lead time, cybercriminals have many opportunities to attack your business infrastructure. There are several ways to give your business the best shot of preventing an attack, but you need to be prepared if you may not always be able to stop a cyber-criminal. A business continuity plan can give your business the best chance to be prepared to manage a security breach.

Having a plan in place helps prevent extensive damage to your business, possibly putting you out of business for good. How do you create a business continuity plan to safeguard your business’s future?

Establish a Business Continuity Team – Depending on your organization’s size, you want to ensure you have a good team of people to help you execute your business continuity plan in the event of a disaster. Include at least one person from every department to facilitate instructions and processes on the next steps.

Conduct a Business Impact Analysis – A business impact analysis will help you identify the most vulnerable areas that could threaten your business’s operations. It’s an analysis of critical functions of your business and each of those functions’ particular vulnerability and the impact a prolonged disruption will cause.

Identify and Store Critical Stakeholders, Resources, and Functions – Identify contacts within your business that you need to keep your business functioning. Create an emergency or backup contact list that includes essential information on each person or entity and ensure that information is up to date. The contact list should include information such as point of contacts names, addresses, and an outline of their function in supporting your business. Having a contact list allows you to keep your lines of communication open to inform stakeholders of critical situations in the event of an attack.

Create a Recovery Plan – If a cyber attack does occur, you will need to draft a recovery plan to implement steps to recover critical business functions. You want to minimize your losses and get your team back to normal operations.

Consistently Review and Revise Your Plan – Your business continuity plan should be routinely tested and updated to ensure the plan will work when you need it to. As your business evolves, testing the plan can ensure no gaps or flaws in your processes and allows you to address any issues. Conduct regular simulations with your team and continuously improve to ensure you are properly prepared.

You can take many security measures to ensure your business does not fall victim to one of the many cyber attacks that are possible in the digital landscape. Even with advanced security, nothing is ever certain, and you want to ensure your business is protected.

AE Technology Group believes that businesses can take many steps to prepare for such emergencies, and it all starts with a data backup and disaster recovery service. We can assist you with implementing such a policy for your organization to ensure that problems don’t disrupt your operations.

For more information, contact us at (516) 536-5006.

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learn from these 8 major companies why an it recovery plan is essential

If you follow the news at all, you are probably well aware many big companies have experienced some major issues with cyber attacks in the last few years. And if you own a small to medium business, you can look at these circumstances and realize anyone is unnervingly close to the unthinkable—a cyber attack that compromises valuable data.

In a recent article by Stephan Buys, Buys compiles a list of some of these corporations so we can learn from their situations and have an IT recovery plan in place for our own businesses.

Blue Cross Blue Shield: This medical insurance company recently suffered from cyber attacks that compromised private information of over 1 million customers. Although social security numbers and financial information stayed safe, hackers still got names, dates of birth, other account information.
Sony: Just a few years ago, hackers got into the Sony database and stole email addresses of employees and movies that hadn’t been released yet. The damages included millions of dollars of losses and the resignation of the CEO at the time. The rumor, largely believed to be true, is that North Korea orchestrated the hack to prevent the release of the movie, The Interpreter.
Target: Surely you remember the security breach of Target in 2013. Over 100 million customers had their personal information stolen. Because they didn’t have any IT recovery plan in place, the attack continued for several weeks.
Chase/JP Morgan: Close to 100 million individuals and millions of small businesses had information stolen from JP Morgan in 2014. Addresses, names, and email addresses were among the information stolen.
Yahoo!: Just this past year, in the largest security breach to date, over 3 billion people had information stolen through a security breach at Yahoo! Little did many people realize, Fantasy, Flickr, and Tumblr are all branches of Yahoo! that were included in the breach.
Equifax: Perhaps most unnerving of the recent cyber hacks was that of Equifax. This credit reporting company lost their reputation as a leader in the industry, their stock prices plummeted, and over 200,000 people had their credit card numbers stolen.
Ashley Madison: This gossip-worthy hack had to potential to expose individuals using this website service to cheat on their spouses. While personal information was stolen, the bigger concern was the privacy of the clients.
Home Depot: These hackers cleverly stole information from Home Depot during a 5 month span from self checkout lines. Fifty six million customers had their credit card numbers or email addresses stolen.

Clearly, no one can be completely safe from a cyber attack. That is why it is so essential to have an IT recovery plan in place. For more information, contact us at AE Technology Group today.