Maybe you think it won’t happen to your business because your business just isn’t that large and important. Yet 60 percent of small businesses have experienced cyber attacks in the form of denial of service attacks, phishing, and social engineering attacks. The consequences of such an attack make small business disaster recovery planning an absolute necessity.
Security breaches are only one cause of computer system outages. Hardware and software failures, power outages, data corruption, internal user error, and natural disasters can also cause unplanned downtime for small businesses. To survive in a world driven by computers, data, and the Internet, small and medium businesses must have a disaster recovery and network restoration plan that anticipates the worst and extends beyond cyber attack recovery.
Small Business Disaster Recovery: Components of a Plan
It would be nice to assume that, because your data is in the cloud with a trusted service provider and a contract, your data is protected. It might be. But businesses need a plan that covers hardware, software, their physical location, and the business’s personnel among other things. Planning for disaster or cyber attack recovery requires several steps.
Risk Assessment and Business Impact Analysis
The first step is to brainstorm the risks that your business faces and grade the likelihood of those risks becoming reality. Prioritizing the likely risks, a business should then assess the impact of those risks, including the likely consequences in terms of time, money, workhours, and outside assistance needed to restore business continuity. Conducting a risk assessment and business impact analysis helps the business devote its prevention planning to the most devastating and likely occurrences. Using a business impact analysis worksheet can streamline the process.
Planning to Avoid Risks
Once the business has identified the major risks and their consequences, prevention planning is the next step. For data, connectivity, and computer issues that would devastate the business, businesses that can afford to do so might provide a duplicate physical setup at an alternate site, sometimes a rented site called a colocation or colocation center.
Cloud-based computing is continually expanding to include new applications and capabilities and, for a price, can provide backup for hardware, software, and data. Cyber liability and business interruption insurance are additional considerations that can provide protection against certain risks as is contracting with IT professionals for recovery services.
What to Include in a Small Business Disaster Recovery Plan
A small business disaster recovery plan should identify the following:
- An incident response team;
- Communication alternatives and procedures for employees and customers; and
- A physical site alternative for the duration of the disaster and the recovery time.
Obviously, the plan should be physically accessible. It should contain contact information for professional support, important customers, and employees. It is critical that employees understand their roles and practice them in frequent tests. Backup solutions should also be tested regularly.
Components of a Denial of Service Response Plan
A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is a cyber attack in which the hacker uses multiple compromised computers and Internet connections to flood the target company with data, causing a service or connectivity interruption. An attack using only one computer is called a denial of service (DoS) attack. Like a disaster recovery plan, a denial of service recovery plan requires evaluation of risk, prevention planning, and recovery planning.
Preventing a Denial of Service Attack
Commercial network protections and consultation with information technology professionals are essential to preventing a DoS attack. Firewalls, virtual private networks, content filtering, and other defensive mechanisms can avert an attack or mitigate the consequences.
Monitoring activity on your business’s networks and websites is also essential in detecting threats. Monitoring services are available to detect unusual activity.
Finally, employees play a critical role in minimizing intrusion risks. Businesses must educate employees about phishing scams and the importance of password best practices and multifactor authentication.
Denial of Service Response Plan and Recovery
After an attack, a business will need to execute a network restoration plan. The plan should include the proper order for connecting and restarting components to avoid additional problems such as a flood of data. During an attack, an Internet service provider will cut off your access to avoid excess data usage, and this connection will need to be reestablished as part of the network restoration plan.
Finally, reconnecting with customers, vendors, and partners who have been impacted by the denial of service is an important part of a denial of service response plan. There may be a loss of trust associated with a denial of service attack: your customers and partners may feel that their personal information or communications are not secure, or that your business is not prepared for cyber attacks. Or, customers unable to contact your business may have found an alternative. Reestablishing your relationships will take time and similar effort to establishing them in the first place. Have a contact list and identify specific steps for this aspect of your cyber attack recovery plan.
A Small Business Disaster Recovery Plan Is Not Beyond Reach
Dependence on the Internet and computers has become nearly universal for small and medium businesses. Neglecting to plan for outages caused by disasters, whether natural, negligent, or criminal, could spell the end of the road for your business. If the idea is daunting or you don’t have the IT staff needed to execute a plan, technology professionals and companies can assist in developing a small business disaster recovery plan to keep operations running when cyber incidents or outages occur.