Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2021. Read them in this 13th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Business Continuity Plans Must Be Top of Mind in 2021
By Dan Johnson, Director of Global Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery at Ensono
The resilience IT leaders built up in 2020 must endure when it comes to business continuity planning for 2021. Silicon Valley and the rest of the country continue to navigate physical access to IT, issues with shadow IT and remote data center control, and in 2021, that resilience will need to carry them through another uncertain year.
So how can organizations use the lessons learned this year to make the most of their business continuity and disaster recovery plans? When looking to maintain security remotely, there are new considerations to keep in mind for next year that the pandemic has unveiled. Here are a few predictions for what security leaders can expect to handle in 2021:
Shuttering primary office locations will be floated. Many employees have been working remotely for the majority of 2020, leading companies to contemplate if a primary office is truly necessary. Yes, people work best when they can collaborate together in the office, but many organizations are now global, and those face-to-face interactions are becoming less frequent anyways. If employees can work safely from home without impacting business operations, companies can save a lot of money by completely closing their primary offices while also keeping employees remote.
If your primary office location is closed, it is especially critical for security professionals to create a robust plan that takes remote IT asset management into consideration.
Satellite office locations may close. Companies that offered alternative office options before the pandemic – like coworking spaces or satellite locations – may be forced to close them again moving forward. Locations that serve as work-area recovery locations for employees to use in the event the primary office is impacted, like in the case of a fire or loss of power, may keep their satellite offices intact. However, the pandemic has taught us that most workers can perform their duties from home. Most companies now provide remote hardware, like laptops, for their employees so that they can still monitor their employees’ network, rendering the ‘work-area recovery site’ redundant. Unless there is a need for employees to be in a secured environment (e.g., wire transmissions, check processing), then employees do not need to work at an offsite location in 2021.
Disaster planning will be prioritized. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best. That’s a business continuity mantra that many in the industry have said at one time or another. However, no one could have predicted the magnitude of impact that a pandemic could cause on a global scale. Sure, there have been other pandemics like H1N1 or Swine Flu, but those were years ago and didn’t bring a fraction of the disruption we have seen with COVID-19, so many companies have ignored pandemics in their plans altogether. Updating protocols on an annual basis should be something you address in your business continuity management program. Businesses should ensure their plans are written for recovery, not specific disasters, which includes planning for a limited or remote workforce.
Essential workers will be identified. The pandemic revealed essential workers across every industry – and we now know who they are when we’ll need them in the future. There are the obvious frontline workers, ranging from nurses, doctors or EMTs to employees at a grocery store, and then there are the behind-the-scenes workers, like employees working in your data center. On-premises IT infrastructure requires employees to continue working in onsite data centers. They need to be there to manage technical issues, perform installations and keep your business operations running. Unfortunately, these positions cannot be performed remotely, so you should ensure you identify which personnel would be required to work onsite to keep your business afloat.
Bolder scenario-based tabletop exercises will be considered. Now that we know that the “impossible” is possible, leaders must use bolder scenarios for tabletop exercises. Sure, it may be easier to anticipate natural disasters – like how severe weather could impact your business based on your geographic location – but what about events that are less frequent or predictable, like a regional power outage? In 2003, a power outage in the northeastern United States and central Canada affected over 55 million people, and it’s estimated that the blackout lost New York City around 500 million dollars. Think outside the box and don’t be afraid to test scenarios that others may say would never happen because, as this year has proven, we know they can.
The year 2020 taught us there is no such thing as being over prepared for any situation. While no plan is bulletproof, the year has surely put more to consider on every leader’s plate. Professionals must contemplate every scenario and mitigate as much risk as possible, whether that’s closing office locations that could be open to a data breach or developing bolder disaster plans.
##
About the Author
Dan Johnson currently holds the position of Director of Global Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery services at Ensono responsible for the corporate BC/DR as well as client DR testing and plan coordination. Dan is an accomplished Business Continuity Professional with 20+ years of experience. Dan has provided leadership in managing many disaster recovery events including power outages, floods and fires and most notably the 2004 LaSalle Bank fire, the largest skyscraper fire in Chicago’s history. Dan has also managed the Covid-19 pandemic to ensure all Ensono operations remain intact and running without interruption. Dan has deep experience in Business Continuity Plan development and extensive testing including Datacenter exercises and business continuity testing. He holds a Certified Business Continuity Professional (CBCP) certification and served for seven years as a board member on the Business Resumption Planners Association (BRPA), two years as President.
