Typical disaster planning assumes a short-term period of downtime, such as a few days to a couple of weeks. However, as we saw in 2020, the pandemic proved that having a plan for people to work for extended periods outside the office is essential to keeping business operations running as smoothly as possible.
Re-evaluate the following aspects of your continuity plan to ensure they will meet your current and future needs.
Increase Bandwidth for Internet Speeds
Make sure your business upload speeds are the highest available, as they significantly impact the productivity of team members logging into the network. Although download speeds matter on the user’s end, any data they access is being “uploaded” to their computers from the company network.
Network Access & Stability
It’s important to know if your hardware (routers/switches) and software (firewall/anti-virus/anti-malware) are up to date. They should be rated to handle the increased external traffic that will be generated with your team working remotely. What may work fine for internal, day-to-day usage may not be set up or compatible with remote access.
Shared, Necessary Files
Any files accessed by multiple users from multiple locations should be on a shared drive. Place these on the company network or store them in the cloud using enterprise-level file sharing. Consider as well any private files protected at the per-user level.
Licensed Applications
Provide a VPN license or a similar secure connection method to anyone needing to connect to the company network. Evaluate “Line of Business” applications. What programs need to be available remotely? Are there enough licensed versions of the programs your team needs to use? Create a list of cloud programs, authorized, installed versions, and users who need access.
Workstations for Your Team
What type of hardware will your team members need to perform their duties from home effectively? Will they use work-issued laptops, or do they need the programs and processing power available from their desktops? If you don’t have computers available to everyone and employees need to use their home computers, you may want to consider adding them to your managed IT services contract. That way, their system will have the same security as all the computers connecting to your company network (firewall, anti-virus, anti-malware, etc.).
Are there any other items you have discovered during this health crisis that need to be added to your continuity plan?
If you would like to have us conduct a Business IT Continuity Analysis of your organization, visit https://www.clearcomit.com/it-continuity-analysis/ or call our office at 508-205-1114 to schedule one for this month.
Updated from the original post dated May 2020
3 Additional Ways to Safeguard Your Company Data from Hackers
That’s a good idea to use things like VPNs and other forms of security for your business. I could see how that would be a good way to prevent your business from gettign hacked or anything, as well as make sure that you could continue doing business as long a possible. I’ll have to make sure that I have someone help me set that sort of thing up if I decide to start a business so I can have a good continuity plan.