Preparing for Internet and Cloud service disruptions
Some businesses are still trying to find their feet and get the basics up and running. If this is you, then we suggest you start with our previous blog Working Remotely during an emergency before delving into this one.
Small businesses need to remain available and functioning as much as possible throughout this emergency.
With teams moving to remote working and families facing weeks of remote schooling, our network infrastructure is going to be tested like it never has before. Things are about to get pretty busy, pretty fast. This means services and applications you depend on today will start to get slower and potentially unstable.
Everyone is trying to access everything, everywhere, all the time. It’s like an unrelenting online Christmas rush.
There is a real fear that the Internet, or at least major parts of it, will break.
Those shiny new communications platforms you’re starting to rely on were some of the first to be impacted. Both Zoom and Microsoft Teams experienced outages in recent weeks as a result.
Even the government has been struggling with the demand for some of its key services, mistaking massive traffic spikes for criminal activities.
There’s not a lot we can do as small businesses to prevent or stop these outages. But there are things we can do to prevent long-term damage when one of the services we depend on stops working.
Preparing for short-term service outages can help you and your business ride through.
Create a plan for your critical services being unavailable
Think about what you would do if critical services you depend on were not available for a day or a week. How would your business respond if your connection to the Internet was lost, you couldn’t communicate over the Internet any more or your CRM or practice management platform went away?
Would you just wait for things to come online again?
Could you switch to an alternative solution?
Maybe you haven’t really thought about it, and aren’t quite sure yet. Don’t worry you wouldn’t be alone.
If you’re considering using an alternative service, there are a number of scenarios to explore and things you should prepare now.
Plan for the Internet going away
There are a number of reasons why your connection to the Internet could stop working. Problems with your router, computer or service provider could all cause disruptions to the Internet and any other service you access through it.
If you or your team experience issues accessing the Internet here are a couple of quick steps to try first:
Check for issues in your local area or a problem with your Internet service provider. Most service providers have a page which announces when they are having outages.
If it’s an issue with your service provider, using your phone’s 4G as a personal hotspot could work as a decent short term solution. Your service provider may even support this in your modem with something like the Telstra Smart Modem.
A number of telcos are offering unlimited data for consumers and small businesses at the moment. This could really help you and your team out but be mindful of potential pitfalls:
Make sure you visit the genuine website of your service provider to get the right information (there are a lot of hoax websites out there).
Check eligibility conditions and if you need to do something to claim this.
Taking note of the contact details and status pages of your key suppliers is an important step when planning for these types of incidents. Make sure you have a copy of your customer details as well in case you need them to get support.
Cynch Members can access this information quickly from their technology list in our Cyber Fitness Platform.
Plan for disruptions to communications and collaboration platforms
With the surge in people using communications and collaboration platforms, there is an increased chance they will reach capacity soon. These service providers might then start to put limits on how many people can use the service or restrict your bandwidth which could impact the usefulness of the service.
The following steps might be worth taking if a communication and/or collaboration service your business relies on runs into problems:
For internal business calls between a few people, you might be able to just use your mobile phone to conference call participants. The number of people that can conference into a call varies depending on the phone (e.g. iPhone supports up to 5, Android 🤷♀) so ask your staff to check how many their device supports.
Investigate back-up options for larger meetings or those that can’t be done over the phone. A lot of businesses are using Zoom, but you can find similar functionality in services like Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts and several others.
Instead of waiting for an outage to start looking at alternatives, take a few minutes now to:
Check you have a valid account setup on back-up services.
Make sure the version you’ve paid for (or not) has all the features you need.
Know where important documents and records will be stored
The last thing any of us wants is for important documents or client records to disappear. Take a few minutes to think about how you’ll respond if the place you store these important files goes offline.
Will manual or offline processes (e.g. handcrafting an invoice to email) suffice?
Do you have copies of your most important business files (e.g. staff emergency contacts, Incident Response Plans etc) stored somewhere offline and secure?
Have you securely backed up anything sensitive or confidential?
Is it appropriately secured with encryption?
Are printed copies or external hard drives appropriately stored away?
Will you and your team have access to customer records during an emergency?
Again is it appropriately secured?
Is your backup stored in a separate location (e.g. Backblaze)?
Do your staff have the right level of access or can you give them access if they need it?
Keep in mind as well that once things return to normal you’ll want to reconcile everything back together. We’ll be sharing advice on this in an upcoming article, subscribe here if you’d like to be notified about when this is available.
Take advantage of free offers… with some caution
There are a number of generous offers being given from many service providers during this time. (Eg. AIIA Business Continuity offers). These are certainly worth taking advantage of when looking for backup solutions.
Before you sign-up though, it’s worth keeping a couple of things in mind:
Make sure they’re a good fit for what you need today.
Check the fine print for:
Duration of the ‘free’ offer,
Steps you need to take to cancel your subscription after the free period.
Information you need to provide in order to subscribe and if this is appropriate.
How many licenses your team will need to use it effectively.
Look for product reviews and ask around to ensure the offer is genuine.
Check for any known security issues (see our platform) or privacy concerns.
Share and Test your plan with your team
Determine the best time to communicate and test your backup plan with your team.
A plan is useless unless you let people know about it and you make sure it works
This is just one scenario that should be considered within your broader Business Continuity Plan and is something we can help you with at Cynch.
Cynch is all about doing things one step at a time. We help small businesses prioritise the most important things they should do in as little as 5 minutes. If you have all of your technologies entered into the platform, your prioritised list is already done.
For more details on how to create a complete business continuity plan, visit https://www.business.gov.au/New-to-business-essentials/When-things-dont-go-to-plan.