A recent technology disruption impacted over 25,000 companies around the world, spanning various industries and services. The cause was a faulty software update resulting in widespread crashes on devices running Windows operating systems. Businesses including airlines, hospitals, banks, emergency services and many more experienced complete shutdowns, halting operations and costing organizations a significant amount of lost revenue.
For many organizations, the recent outage highlighted the necessity of comprehensive disaster recovery plans. The scale and severity of this event were unprecedented, and despite resources quickly becoming available for remediation, many businesses are still recovering from the lingering effects.
Review critical steps organizations can take to best prepare for unexpected technical disruptions below:
- How to Address a Technical Disruption
- Strategies to Prepare for Future Disruptions
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
- How We Can Help
How to Address a Technical Disruption
While an outage of this scale is exceedingly rare, many organizations are not well equipped to handle a disruption like it properly; a temporary outage could have a costly and lengthy impact in areas beyond revenue, including customer perception and brand trust.
To ensure they are prepared to address a technical disruption, businesses need to understand the scope, impact and repercussions of the disruption, as well as the steps required to return to normal operations by taking the following actions:
Organizational Impact Assessment
The first step to recovery is understanding the extent of the damage. Organizations can do this by:
- Identifying how the disruption impacted the organization
- Triaging non-operational applications or processes
- Prioritizing critical business functions and updates
- Determining potential revenue and market loss
These steps provide leadership and technology teams with clear insights into which areas of the business require immediate priority. Primarily consumer-focused businesses will need to consider how remediations are handled in the event of disrupted events or services and how they handle the public relations of that reconciliation, a critical next step in addressing any disruption.
Provide Clear and Effective Communications
A unified response is a central piece of any disaster plan. Team members must be aware and capable of speaking on behalf of the entire business to ensure there are no significant long-term losses in customer or partner trust. Here’s how:
- Inform the organization about the outage and steps being taken to address it.
- Notify employees about potential malware or phishing attempts related to the outage.
- Create guidelines for media responses, clearly defining approved internal and external messaging.
- Notify customers of potential delays and provide warnings about potential security threats including an uptick in malware, phishing attacks or privacy breaches.
Regardless of the extent of the disruption, communication is vital for positive public perception. Demonstrating a commitment to resolution and offering a clear path to recovery will go a long way to ensuring vendors, customers and partners are properly informed.
Identify and Implement Solutions
At this point leadership and IT teams will choose the best response option, factoring in the details acquired in the organizational impact assessment like the source, response and outcome of the disruption. An effective plan should include the following:
- Identifying if or how current teams can support the required solutions.
- Building manual patch-by-patch solutions per device and whether this process can be supported with current resources.
- Weighing the cost of remediation of outsourcing talent solutions versus existing staff deprioritizing other critical business objectives.
Solutions will likely be broken into short- and long-term phases, each with distinct objectives. Determining resource allocations to achieve business goals and prevent future outages should remain a critical conversation amongst business leaders as events unfold.
Strategies to Prepare for Future Disruptions
A disruption can occur from within or outside an organization, and disaster recovery plans must account for both scenarios. Though no plan is immune to failure, here are the best methods for ensuring a quick, smooth recovery in the wake of an unforeseen disruption.
Assess the Existing Risk Management Program
To isolate areas where responsiveness needs improvement, begin by assessing current risk management policies and procedures. Factors like update frequency, existing cybersecurity strategies and incident response policies must be scrutinized to identify single points of failure and prevent future widespread disruptions.
Here is a list of areas to examine during an assessment:
- Business continuity planning: Develop business continuity plans with strategies for sustaining critical services, functions and processes in the face of disruptions to technology, third party providers, personnel and/or locations.
- Testing/Simulations: Conduct facilitated, scenario-based discussions (tabletops) and functional exercises to validate the viability of organizational plans and capabilities.
Proactively Prepare for Cyber Threats
Assess the current organizational IT infrastructure, paying close attention to weaknesses that could occur in the event of scaling, high load or service loss. Areas for consideration should include:
- Cloud versus on-premises solutions for backups, storage and real-time availability
- Decentralized workloads and file storage policies
- Deployment policies, including phased rollouts and pre-deployment testing
- Cybersecurity capabilities, including employee training
- Disaster recovery plans, including drills and plan update frequency
Diligently Manage Vendor Risk
While vendor and partner services can dramatically enhance organizational capabilities, policies must be in place in the event of a disruption like a faulty vendor update. To protect against cybersecurity risks for vendors and a business, teams should consider implementing the following processes:
- Lead in innovation: Program assessments which anticipate future needs to stay ahead of the evolving IT landscape.
- IT trend evaluations: Examine and incorporate new shifts in the IT landscape, such as data privacy, nth-party risk, AI, environmental, social and governance changes.
- Organizational threat awareness: Continually update internal security policies and employee training to protect against increased malware and phishing attacks.
- Cross-program integration: Identify areas for technology and collaborative integrations to improve performance and security.
- Comparative analysis: Utilize data on industry peers and top-rated applications to analyze and align program objectives.
Conclusion
IT disruptions can have significant long-term effects on businesses. The longer the recovery timeline, the more severe the repercussions. The recent disruption presented a valuable learning opportunity for IT and leadership teams to invest in additional cybersecurity measures, highlighting the importance of effective organizational disaster recovery policies.
To mitigate the potential revenue and brand trust loss that a slow response could entail, it’s important for organizations to consider internal and external strategies to address the disruption. While some organizations may have the internal resources required to resolve the issue, outsourcing staffing needs through a trusted talent solutions or managed services partner provides a cost-effective strategy while promptly addressing the disruption.
FAQ Summary: Technology Disruption Best Practices
Being prepared for technical disruptions is critical to minimize its impact and ensure a timely recovery. Below are some commonly asked questions to help guide your organization in managing a disruption effectively.
Q: How do you prevent technology disruptions?
A: In short, you can’t. Technology disruptions are unpredictable and can happen at any time. However, organizations should put steps in place to prepare for these disruptions by regularly assessing risk management programs and implementing strong cybersecurity measures with robust disaster recovery plans.
Q: How do you manage technology disruptions?
A: Effectively managing technology disruptions involves thorough organizational impact assessments, clear and effective communication plans, and identifying and implementing solutions to address the disruption and restore normal operations in a timely manner.
Q: How can organizations prepare for future technical disruptions?
A: Organizations can prepare for future technical disruptions by continuously evaluating and improving their risk management strategies, conducting regular disaster recovery drills and staying proactive against cyber threats through updated policies and employee training.
How We Can Help
Vaco is a global professional services organization delivering consulting, managed services and talent solutions through a collective of go-to-market brands. Our expertise spans key functional areas to include accounting, finance, data and AI, digital and technology transformation, cybersecurity and supply chain. We help clients navigate change, drive growth and achieve business transformation by partnering to create comprehensive and tailored solutions.
From planning to implementation, our team of experts stand ready to address critical technology and cybersecurity challenges. We remain committed to ensuring that organizations are well-prepared to confidently overcome today’s challenges and prepare for future interruptions.
