Business Disasters

When conducting a business (especially in eCommerce), the main platform for the business is all digitized and electronic. Nonetheless, there are 2 main ways in which a company that uses IT can run into issues. These 2 main concepts are (1) incurring physical disasters which would damage the physical business, and (2) when there is a problem with the system you are using to operate your business. Employees must always think: "What this building was destroyed, where would we set up next?" or "What if my computer got hacked, and all confidential information was leaked, what would be the next step?". These two questions encompass two of the main points. Nonetheless, the topic of natural disasters is an umbrella for a number of physical issues such as:natural disasters, war, fire, power outage, etc. On the other hand, however, more technical disasters include: Hacking, equipment failure, application failure, and customers. Prime examples for a physical disaster could include tornado's in Texas, which demolish everything in it's path. Often employees will have to think about where they will decide to set up a new office. A great example of a technical disaster was when Xbox was hacked, and all of their customers credit card information was leaked. The employees were immediately thinking about what they could do to resolve the problem - this is what we would call a disaster recovery plan (DRP). Whilst it is important to understand what to do in dire situations such as the ones above, it is just as important to be prepared for any possible disaster that comes your way. Therefore, Business Continuity Plans (BCP) are important to keep business going at a normalized rate without a hitch. Employees take certain measures such as anti-virus software and firewalls to prevent such issues from arising.

In any given company, there is a mix of both of these plans. However, often times it can become expensive, thus a company may choose which software they will want to make a plan. For example, a company living in the New Orleans, where the possibility of hurricanes is quite high, they may be more inclined to pay money to have a good BRP. Or tech companies that have a lot of their consumers confidential information. The company would lose a large share of their reputation and brand equity if an event such as the one mentioned happened.

The table on the right suggests that the business continuity must come before disaster risk. This is because without the core competencies to initially run a business and keep in productive, the business would not survive, let alone exist. Further yet, the disaster recovery plan is on the bottom, because these types of disasters are sometimes unavoidable, but happen rarely. Further, if you focus more on ensuring that nothing actually happens to your business (preventative measures), then your business will have less problems, consumers would be made happy as there are no problems with the business, and lastly because you will have better and stronger business.