Introduction
The cybersecurity company CrowdStrike created a major global outage on July 20, 2024. The result? Widespread system crashes for its clients. This was one of the most significant tech disruptions to date. It affected major organizations worldwide like banks, airlines, hospitals, and government offices. The cause of the outage? A faulty software update that bypassed essential quality control measures. Reported NBC News, this suggests inadequate testing and vetting processes, contributing to the deployment of the problematic code. What’s next? It’s beyond crucial for organizations to have reliable business continuity technology to evaluate the effects of disruptions and manage their responses effectively when unexpected events occur.
Ask yourself: Is our business prepared for future incidents that may disrupt our business continuity? Here are ten ways to help answer this question.
Ten-Step Action Plan
Traditionally, internal audit has focused on compliance, financial reporting, and risk management. Auditors would assess the effectiveness of internal controls, identify areas of improvement, and ensure that the organization adheres to regulatory requirements. While these functions remain essential, the scope of internal audit is expanding.
- Proactively Plan for Disruptions: Enhance your organization’s resilience by preparing for threats such as cyberattacks, natural disasters, workplace violence, and supply chain disruptions. Implement scalable solutions with built-in processes and analytics to ensure quick and efficient recovery.
- Conduct Regular Business Impact Assessments (BIA): Use proprietary algorithms and custom reporting to perform effective BIAs, focusing on critical processes and impact factors. This helps in managing risk objectively and prioritizing resources effectively.
- Centralize Recovery Plans: Maintain a central repository of up-to-date recovery plans accessible online and via mobile devices. This ensures recovery strategies are readily available and can be executed efficiently to restore IT assets and business operations quickly.
- Implement Robust Vendor Risk Management: Assess and manage third-party risk by ensuring vendors have adequate recovery and contingency plans. Improve vendor performance and obtain assurances that critical services can continue within service level agreements and recovery time objectives.
- Adapt to the Hybrid Workplace: Update business continuity plans to accommodate the evolving needs of a hybrid workplace. Prepare for resource shortages, demand surges, and geopolitical situations to maintain operational resilience.
- Develop Comprehensive Crisis Management Plans: Create detailed crisis management plans for various scenarios. Define and structure plans with clear phases, groups, decisions, and tasks to streamline responses during a crisis.
- Leverage Advanced Analytics and Dashboards: Use powerful analytics and reporting tools to identify threats, vulnerabilities, and gaps. Gain immediate insights into your most vulnerable processes and prioritize next steps based on data-driven decisions.
- Conduct Regular Testing and Exercises: Regularly test and exercise your business continuity plans to ensure their effectiveness. Identify gaps between objectives and capabilities and refine plans based on test results to enhance resilience.
- Focus on Operational Resilience and Internal Audits: Conduct thorough internal audits to support operational resilience. This helps identify vulnerabilities, ensures compliance with business continuity standards, and strengthens the organization’s ability to recover from disruptions.
- Adopt Risk-Assessed, Scenario-Based Planning: Move beyond traditional disaster recovery methods by implementing risk-assessed, scenario-based business continuity planning. Monitor key metrics to identify sudden risks and ensure continuous security protection throughout business disruptions.
How Does SAI360 Help Businesses Remain Resilient Amidst Disruption?
Our powerful analytics and reporting capabilities provide actionable insights to improve operational resiliency and recovery.
SAI360 provides a comprehensive business continuity solution designed to enhance organizational resilience and ensure rapid recovery from disruptions. With built-in best practices and response-ready processes, SAI360 helps business continuity managers proactively prepare for threats to people, processes, and property.
The platform includes tools for building business impact analyses, creating and managing recovery plans, and tracking business continuity plans with real-time dashboards. It also supports objective risk assessments and automated workflows for efficient information collection and response coordination.
Please find attached SAI360 BCM Solution sheet for your quick overview.
Source: SAI360
