Business Continuity Plan of IT Manager - Assignment Example

Business Continuity Plan Conducting a business in this modern world is akin to steering a boat in the river in the midst of a hurricane. There can be many expected or unexpected threats or difficulties faced by the manager of an organization which have to be dealt with in order to run business smoothly. In this paper I will be exploring my business continuity plan (BCP) as IT manager of the only print shop in a small town in Idaho. The forces that steer the activities of a business can be both internal and external. The internal factors include employees, structure and systems that can be controlled by the organization. The managerial strategy is shaped according to the internal environment of the organization. In the modern era, every business organization performs in a dynamic environment where the external factors are constantly changing and unpredictable. The primary goal of all companies is to achieve their set goals and objectives, and all strategies pertaining to this attainment is subjected to situations both internal and external to the organization. The external factors include political and economic conditions of the country along with customers, competition and technology. The concerned print shop is connected to the internet by satellite link. In this case, the external threats can be in the form of viruses or worms that are generally spread through the internet. Internal threats may occur when an employee steals any information. In many cases external threats may happen due to internal factors. For instance, if an employee, knowingly or unknowingly passes on business information in social media sites then any foreign entity can send an innocent looking email to employee’s profile which if the employee opens can infect the entire system and compromise the shop’s network (Cole, 2012, p.88). Therefore, the need is to keep track of all kinds of threats and adopt protection accordingly. It is important for any manager to identify risks of the concerned business and take practical steps not only for daily activities but also for the future of the company. Managing risks can become extremely difficult if the manager does not take into confidence the owner of the shop. As a manager it is my duty to remind the owner the significance of an effective risk management tool. Communication is another important aspect of risk management. Therefore, my principle focus is on communication to the employees about the current events that can affect the smooth operation of the shop. It is not possible for a manager to work along without total cooperation from the employees of the shop. As a manager of a print shop, it is necessary have the required qualifications to understand the attached operational risks. A manager cannot minimize the negative impacts of risks without the consolidated efforts of every employee. Therefore, as a manager I need to use my creative mind to come up with solutions that can be acceptable by all employees and also should effective (Gibson, 1991). Risk maintenance is essentially identification and calculation of risks, and prioritizing the type of risks. Since the concerned print shop deals with email attachments received by customers there are some certain identifiable security risks. One most prominent is spam which are usually useless promotional messages that fill up the inbox that provoke the user to buy different products or to participate in fake get-rich lotteries. Such inundation of spam messages can fill the inbox which makes the employees difficult to manage the actual attachments sent by the customers. While some spam mails are generally harmless as they usually transport the users to a shopping link to induce them to buy things, there other spam mails that contain malicious links which when clicked can spread harmful virus inside the system which can corrupt the system. Another threat can be viruses which are usually spread through the internet and cause machines to crash. Viruses can do extensive damage like deleting important data files, reformatting a hard drive, and can also be duplicated with programs without the awareness of the user. Viruses can also steal important information about the shop like banking passwords or other security details. Viruses can be extremely harmful depending upon the speed at which they get spread (Brown, 2010, p.102). Next, as a manager I should ensure that the employees of the shop are duly trained to understand and handle the various internal or external security threats. For this, the first thing is to teach them about the potential and unexpected threats to a print shop. First of all they should be told that their computers should be clean which means they should install only those programs that are necessary for the shop’s business activities. Any unnecessary programs will not only slow down the system but unknown programs can expose the security system of the network. Second, the employees should be informed that they use cryptic passwords for their email, and change them regularly in order to protect their data. Moreover, they should learn to always keep backups of their work so that data do not get deleted accidentally. Third, it is extremely important to warn the employees not to open any unrecognized emails and not post any important information about the shop’s activities in any social networking sites. Training employees is a critical step towards creating customer confidence. The BCP “must embrace risk, emergency, and recovery planning if an organization is going to be able to manage a crisis or disaster event and have any hope of returning to business-as-usual operations” (Doughty, 2000, p.xi). BCP is not considered as redundant anymore and is an intrinsic part of any risk management program of a business unit. As a manager I adopted one strategy of maintaining regular communication with my employees to understand the status of workload. This way I can plan ways to deal with excessive print orders received through emails. Secondly, I will prepare my employees to deal with any sudden security risks like crashing of the entire system that can cause loss of all the orders received through emails. The solution is to create strong spam filters so that employees can keep proper track of important mails. However, there are certain risks attached to implementation of BCP. Since in a small print shop the employee turnover can be high therefore it becomes difficult to train the new employees. Moreover, employees often unknowingly open emails thinking they are from customers and this can cause triggering of viruses that can disrupt the system. In such cases employees will not use the spam filters which are installed as part of risk management. References Brown, B.C. (2010) How to Stop E-mail Spam, Spyware, Malware, Computer Viruses, and Hackers from Ruining Your Computer or Network, Atlantic Publishing Company Cole, E. (2012) Advanced Persistent Threat: Understanding the Danger and How to Protect Your Organization, Newnes Doughty, K. (2000) Business Continuity Planning: Protecting Your Organization’s Life, CRC Press Gibson, K.R. (1991) Making Risk Management Happen in Your Organization. Risk Management, 38(4), 71-73 Read More