Protecting your assets

Most often, in work and play, when disasters strike, people act in unexpected and uncoordinated ways. The best way to ensure that efforts to minimize damage are coordinated is to practice. Plan and practice. It’s the best way to protect your assets. It’s the only way to ensure the work you put into your business continuity plan won’t be in vain.

Business impact analysis

As stated in the Gartner IT Glossary, business impact analysis is “a process that identifies and evaluates the potential effects (financial, life/safety, regulatory, legal/contractual, reputation and so forth) of natural and man-made events on business operations.”

To protect your assets, you first need to truly understand what they are and how to prioritize them.

Risk analysis

Once you’ve identified the assets you need to protect, you can better analyze the risks associated with them. You need to now determine the probability of specific risks affecting your valued assets.

Protecting your assets

Knowing your assets and the risks that affect them will help you put together methods for protecting your assets.

Think physical security

It will be easier to protect your data if the doors to the devices that store your data are locked. Not all of your assets will be protected behind walls or windows, but for those that are, keep physical security in mind.

Create backups

Even the best-laid plans can be thwarted, especially if you fail to practice your plan. Creating backups of important information and keys. Make sure backups are kept in the safest places, and possibly multiple places: basement storage and the cloud, in the office and at home.

Update business continuity plans

Your business continuity plan is fluid; it’s not something you create and are done with. Business continuity planning requires regular check ups and revisions. If your plan is out of date or no one knows what it is, you may as well not have one at all.

Think of your seven Ps: Proper Planning Practice Prevents P*** Poor Performance. These Ps apply to your business continuity plan. Protecting your assets won’t just happen. Your employees or team may know what’s most important, but the only way to ensure planned coordinated efforts to protect them is to actually plan and practice.