IT Risk Management

Corodata TeamJul. 10, 2018 | Data Breach, Data Protection |
Malware, ransomware, natural disasters; the threats to your network are growing daily. Developing an IT risk management plan can mean the difference between the smooth continuation of business and total collapse. Review these 3 tips to learn how you can proactively protect your business against these mounting dangers.

What is IT Risk Management?

IT Risk Management (also known as enterprise risk management) is the name of a collection of different precautions an organization may take to ensure security and business continuity through a data disaster event. It involves planning around three principles, listed below:

Business Continuity

How long can you afford to be offline for? Assessing the cost of downtime for different business units and applications allows your organization to develop a hierarchy for recovery based on how mission-critical each subunit is to business continuity.

Disaster Recovery

How can your organization ensure that data is not lost when disaster strikes? There are a number of different ways to backup data and add redundancies to your network. Finding the right mix for your organization is crucial for any IT risk management plan.

Information Security

How can you be sure that data stays in the right hands? Not all IT risk involves big, obvious network failures. Sometimes the only thing worse than nobody having access to data is the wrong person having access. Employee vetting, penetration testing, and constant vigilance are all part of a holistic IT risk management plan.

Developing a Solution

So where to begin? Just as there are three main problems to address in IT risk management, a complete response has three parts.

1.

Process

Begin by identifying the main sources of risk your networks face. Your reaction to server failure caused by an earthquake will differ from that caused by a cyber attack. Confusion in the moment of a disaster can greatly exacerbate losses from downtime and impede a return to operations. Once you’ve identified likely scenarios, you can start to plan for each. A good IT risk management plan will have a process for formally declaring a disaster to be in progress, and have clearly defined next steps for every person involved in the recovery process.

2.

Priority

This is where previous assessments of downtime costs become crucial. With the potentially limited ability of your organization to respond after a disaster, where should resources be focused? Concentrate recovery efforts on those places where the return of functionality will have the greatest impact on continued business operations. This means prioritizing business units that provide your core activities, especially if they are customer-facing.

3.

People

There are two aspects to the personal side of IT risk management: preparation and execution. Employees need to be aware of the procedures for a data disaster event, and that means both education and holding drills to simulate disaster-style events. Having a plan ready in case of disaster is useless if nobody knows what it is. When the worst does happen, contact is key. Making sure that employees are aware of the disaster and know their role in the recovery plan will greatly speed up recovery efforts.

How Corodata Can Help

At Corodata, information security is our primary concern. Our media rotation and cloud storage services provide excellent options for easily-accessible, off-site data backup.

Developing Your IT Risk Management Plan

Want a deeper dive into improving your disaster preparedness? Take a look at our data protection services for a demonstration of the above principles and tips for how to best apply them within your organization. Learn More