Unfortunately, small businesses are being targeted more and more often for cybercrime, and it is not a question of if a small business will experience a cybersecurity incident, but when and how. 71% of cyber attacks are conducted against small businesses and as a result, about 50% of small businesses have been a victim of some sort of cybercrime. With the odds stacked against small businesses, an IT resiliency plan could save your business.
A resiliency plan gives a small business the ability to respond correctly to any cyber breach or data loss by creating a plan of action for different scenarios before they become an issue. Part of this is a training and awareness program so all employees know the appropriate reaction to a cybercrime.
There are several pieces that contribute to a successful resiliency plan. Here are the basics:
- Risk Assessment
A great place to start is a risk assessment. After a risk assessment, a company knows what weaknesses it has from a cybersecurity standpoint and where it is likely to encounter a problem. A risk assessment also takes into account your most valuable assets, such as client data, and your most valuable resources – those applications your company and your employees cannot run without. Working those into your resiliency plan allows for your business to have a response that is uniquely tailored to its own operations.
- Business Impact Analysis
A business impact analysis goes hand in hand with a risk assessment in setting a small business up for an IT resiliency plan. The business impact analysis helps to determine how much downtime from a cybersecurity incident could cost a small business through a detailed study of the departments, activities, dependencies, and infrastructure.
- Crisis Management
This portion of the IT resiliency plan provides the initial response to a cybersecurity incident. This response will lead to the recovery of a small business’s most essential products and services. This will help to mitigate the overall impact of the cybersecurity incident.
- Crisis Communication
How you communicate with both internal and external parties is important in a cybersecurity disaster. An IT resiliency plan can include a template with key information that needs to conveyed as soon as you realize you have been victim of a cybercrime.
- Business Recovery
Arguably the most important part of an IT resiliency plan, the business recovery portion gets those critical activities up and running in a timely manner. Executing this portion of the plan relies heavily on all of the other contributing pieces.
- Training and Roll Out
Training employees on an IT resiliency plan ensures the plan will be followed to the letter during a crisis. If a cybersecurity crisis is to occur, your employees can rest assured knowing a plan is in place to get everything up and running again.
