In the business world, there is one certainty that we can count on – change. It seems like something new pops up every day, and we must adapt. This can be incredibly challenging for small businesses trying to keep up with the ever-changing digital landscape. One way to help ensure your business survives (and thrives) in today’s digital age is to create a continuity plan. In this blog post, we will discuss digital continuity and how you can create a plan for your business.
Identifying digital continuity.
Most businesses rely on digital systems and tools – from email to communicate with customers to storing essential data in the cloud. If any of these systems were to fail or become unavailable, it could have a severe impact on your business. This is where digital continuity comes in. Digital continuity is the process of ensuring that your critical digital systems and data are always available and can be recovered quickly in the event of an unexpected outage or disaster. Identifying which systems and data are critical to your business is the first step in creating a digital continuity plan.
Planning for digital continuity.
Now that you have identified which systems and data are critical to your business, you can start planning how to keep them available in the event of an outage. There are a few different ways to do this, but one common approach is to create redundant systems. Redundant systems are backup systems that kick in if the primary system fails. This ensures that there is always a working system available, even if one goes down. Another approach is to use cloud-based services that offer high availability (HA). HA means that the service is designed to be constantly available, even in an outage at their facility. By using HA services, you can help ensure that your critical systems and data are always accessible.
Improved data security.
In addition to ensuring that your systems are always available, it is also vital to ensure that your data is secure. One way to do this is to encrypt your data. Encryption is the process of transforming readable data into an unreadable format. This makes it difficult for anyone who does not have the encryption key to access the data. In addition, if you are using cloud-based services, check the security measures they have for your data security. Another way to help keep your data secure is to create regular backups. This way, even if your primary system fails or your data is lost or corrupted, you will have a backup that you can restore from.
Testing your digital continuity plan.
Once you have created your digital continuity plan, it is important to test it to ensure it works as intended. You don’t want to wait until an actual outage to discover that your plan doesn’t work! There are a few different ways you can test your plan. One way is to simulate an outage by shutting down the primary system and seeing if the backup system kicks in correctly. Another way is to do a complete data restore from a backup to ensure all of the data is intact and can be accessed. By regularly testing your plan, you can help ensure it will work when you need it most.
Digital continuity is integral to doing business in today’s digital age. By identifying which systems and data are critical to your business, creating redundant systems, and encrypting your data, you can help ensure that your business will survive (and thrive) in an unexpected outage or disaster.
