All businesses, regardless of size, face the threat of unplanned crises ranging from natural disasters to cyber-attacks. As the rate of these unexpected events continues to increase, the need for a solid and current Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BC/DR) plan has become more critical than ever. In fact, 74% of organizations consider unplanned IT and telecom outages the top threat to their business.

However, according to a 2016 ITProPortal survey, many companies don’t have a comprehensive BC/DR plan. And the ones that do, as the survey results of the Aberdeen Group discovered, don’t practice their plans regularly – only 50% of industry average organizations test their BC/DR systems on a regular basis.

The word “disaster” sounds epic and unlikely, which may be the reason many organizations hesitate to put a plan in place. But, the reality is, anything that affects smoothly run operations – a small human error, like an employee accidentally trashing a file, or an unexpected influx of malicious ransomware or distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks – can directly affect a company’s success. Any amount of downtime costs companies’ resources such as time and money, but even more threatening, a potentially devastating loss to their reputation. And with 1 in 3 organizations reporting being hit by a virus or a malware attack within the last five years, ensuring your BC/DR plan remains equipped with the right solutions is essential.

Many organizations diligently create plans that define risks and mission-critical components. However, they often fall short when it comes to adequately testing their plans, out of fear that it will disrupt their normal flow of operations and/or reveal real issues they may not have the solutions to fix. But with the average price of a critical application failure costing businesses $500,000 to $1 million per hour of downtime, it is recommended for companies to have a comprehensive, tested BC/DR plan.

Businesses should avoid becoming complacent with their established plan by making sure that both the plan and their testing exercises become increasingly more progressive. Progressive testing helps businesses confirm they have the right components (a secure firewall, DDoS mitigation, etc.) and recovery strategy in place in order to keep up with changes in their business, as well as threats that continually evolve over time.

Running through your organization's BC/DR plan testing exercises a few times per year will help determine if plans need to adapt to any technology updates or personnel changes, and ensure the plan satisfies the most recent regulatory mandates to keep your business in compliance.

A regularly exercised BC/DR plan will not only help your business meet RPOs, RTOs, SLAs and additional goals, it will also guide your company to discover the right protection service that provides a full range of solutions to keep your business up and running.

Businesses are finding that cloud-based services allow for the ability to implement technology solutions as needed without the need for expensive on-site infrastructure. Cloud resources prevent business disruption even when primary network connections are down and protect mission-critical data and applications in the event of any system failure.

By implementing a managed services provider, you gain the advantages of proactive solutions like DDoS mitigation for network protection and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services to reroute calls on the fly, as well as other services that can be customized to your needs. By using a managed service for services such as DDoS, the solution is continually updated to address ever-evolving threats, freeing up your time and resources to focus on other things.

When you choose one provider with multiple BC/DR solutions, such as those offered by Altice Business’s portfolio of solution services, you leverage proven expertise and benefit from the lowered total cost of ownership, predictable expenses, and multiplied protection from a trusted business provider with a proven record for reliable, resilient services.