Pandemics have the power to disrupt life across the globe. The raging COVID-19 pandemic has claimed more than 15,000 lives in a span of a few months. It has also taken a toll on the global economy forcing many organizations to shut down temporarily. Several small businesses have had to lay off their employees and now face the threat of permanent closure.

The advent of modern technology has made businesses increasingly dependent on computers and the internet. From storing confidential data to making sales pitches - your business requires computer systems for almost every task. Moreover, you likely use internet-based communication systems to communicate with your employees, clients, and other stakeholders. Unfortunately, the growing dependence on technology also puts you at the risk of cyberattacks.

Whether you’ve got your services hosted on a local or cloud server, IT outages can occur at anytime. While cloud servers are safer bets as they usually encounter little downtime incidents, they may falter still go down when you least expect it. For all you know, a massive DDoS attack can cripple multiple cloud servers at a time and lead to significant downtimes. The February 2017 outage of Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 was one such incident.

In July, six hospitals fell victim to ransomware, phishing, and other cybersecurity breaches. However, these aren’t scattered incidents. Nearly 55% of healthcare companies in the U.S. claimed that they faced cyberattacks. According to the 2018 Horizon Report, almost 100% of all web applications that are connected to critical health systems are vulnerable to cyberattacks.

Having a business continuity plan alongside plans for emergency response, crisis management, crisis communications, and disaster recovery is mandatory for all organizations, regardless of their profile, industry, structure, or size. Accounting for the day-to-day priorities of a business means having a plan in place in case of a downtime or disruption of activity. Therefore, all risk managements strategies should come with a business continuity plan, which needs to be executed by professional and experienced teams. Without a business continuity plan, the aftermath of a crisis can escalate to various degrees of disaster, such as losing money, losing brand loyalty, or even bankruptcy.

The secret to maintaining business continuity after a disaster strikes is in being fully prepared with a robust business continuity plan long before disruption occurs.

When creating a business continuity plan, you are creating a robust outline of procedures and measures to support your business in times of crisis. Therefore, any software that can enhance the performance of your business continuity plan must be considered and utilized. Redflag has a selection of features that streamline emergency notifications across all platforms, making communication easy and professional in the face of a disaster.

There are many emergency notification systems available for businesses to use in the event of a natural or manmade threat to their infrastructure and daily business processes.

Hurricane season puts your business at risk of data loss, facility damages, downtime, and many other inconveniences associated with natural disaster.

Your IT infrastructure is a delicate part of your overall business. It is the glue that holds together all of the hardware, software, data, and information that keeps your staff, customers, managers, and stakeholders up to date whilst your business runs smoothly. However, as with any technology reliant parts of your organization, there will be occasions when your IT infrastructure fails.