Up until 5 minutes ago, Doomsday Preppers were generally considered a little kooky. Operating in the fringes of society, these self-described guardians of civilization have kept themselves busy creating survival plans for worst-case scenario situations.
What makes these Preppers tick? Can their seemingly overzealous tendencies apply to business — IT, in particular?
Let’s take a look at their creed for some insight:
- Take responsibility for your own survival
- Advocate for preparedness, and plan for crisis
- Be alert to threats, and work to improve your skills and knowledge
- Source and maintain the equipment and supplies that you will need in a crisis
Now, whether these obsessive survivalists are paranoid or prophetic remains to be seen. What is valuable to us at this moment is their “Be Prepared” mindset.
The best IT leaders operate from the same mindset.
They don’t prepare for “possible” events. They plan for events as if they fully expect them to occur.
Physical Threats & Cyber-Threats Gunning for Your IT Infrastructure
What threats exist to your company’s IT?
There are the physical ones you hear about on the news and even experience. Floods from “atmospheric river” storms. Large-scale power outages from aging grids. Fires growing beyond the state’s ability to contain them.
Then there are the digital risks. Internet-born threats from foreign adversaries. The relentless, exponential growth of cybercrime.
Are you prepared, or do you have a plan, for emergencies like these?
- Extended power loss at your office
- Computer hardware damage from power surges, electromagnetic pulses (EMPs), or even solar flares
- Extended internet outages, rendering you unable to access your cloud servers, or process transactions
- Phone service loss where you can’t communicate with your customers
- Ransomware attack that spreads malware throughout your network
No? Then channel your inner Doomsday Prepper!
The 3 Response Plans Every Business Should Have, and What They Should Cover
To “Prep” your IT for disaster, create incident response plans that cover the risks you do face. Most companies need these three plans:
- Cyber Incident Response Plan – your company’s response to a cyberattack
- Communications Loss Response Plan – when your internet and/or phone system go out
- Power Loss Response Plan – guidelines for handling power loss at your company
The mere creation of these Incident Response Plans can shine the light on missing fail safes in your company’s cybersecurity, power and internet services. These are opportunities for remediation, making you better prepared for, or even able
to avoid, a crisis.
What should your plans cover? A good Incident Response Plan contains these elements:
- Identification of responding team members and their roles in each plan
- A detailed description of the IT environment/products/services at issue and complete vendor information
- Initial remediation steps and the escalation plan over the course of the crisis until resolved
- Postmortem meeting for feedback on the incident response and future improvements
A Hidden Benefit of Incident Response Plans for Tomorrow – Insurance Savings Today
If that sounds like a lot of work for potentially no reward, here’s some extra motivation...you can save on insurance costs!
Not only do these written plans organize your team and resources in planning for a future event, but the plans themselves may lower your Cyber Insurance premiums. How? By being able to answer YES when your insurance company asks if you have an Incident
Response Plan.
It’s Not a Matter of ‘If’ Something Bad Happens...It’s ‘When’
The effort involved in preparing for a crisis is small. Compared to the effort involved in recovering from a crisis that caught you unprepared.
“Prep” now, and you’ve positioned your business for success when the next crisis comes around.
Need help preparing your company’s incident response plans? Reach out to PlanetMagpie’s IT Consulting team at sales@planetmagpie.com. They will help get you squared away.