Risk

What are the Risks?

The risks surrounding systems failure range from minor inconvenience to fatalities, largely depending on the type of system.

An information website being unavailable for a day may just be annoying; the failure of a computerised life-support system would be disastrous.

A true understanding of risk requires risk management  if it is to be formally addressed.

Answer the following questions for an indication of whether you should be taking steps to protect your systems, or use the Health Check tool for a more detailed analysis.

Question your Risk

1 Are you dependent on any single thing (computer, person, building, telephone line, ISP, supplier, shipping agent, haulage firm, etc)?

 If YES, you could be putting all your eggs into one basket. Wherever there is a single point of failure, you run the risk of your entire enterprise depending on that element.

Try to reduce the number of single points. Better still, eliminate them by establishing alternative sources of service and supply

2 Have you ever analysed your business processes in the context of "What happens if this fails, goes wrong, or simply isn't there?"

 You may benefit from good housekeeping  advice.

3 Do you understand the threats your business is facing?

You may, for example, be working near an industrial plant that is inherently dangerous, or near an office under terrorist threat, such as a Government building.

Many threats come from unexpected quarters. About half the organisations that have not prepared incident management or crisis management  plans and then suffer an incident fail to survive more than a year.

4 How would you reconstruct your company information should it be lost or corrupted? How long would this take, and how long could you survive in the meantime?

If you don't know, or haven't prepared any contingency, you run the risk of catastrophic failure, as most businesses are totally dependent on their information.

5 Do your staff know who to call if there is a major incident? Do you know the home and mobile telephone numbers of all your key people?

Remember that if you keep your contact details in the office, these become useless if a fire affects your premises.

If you answered NO to any of the above, it will be worthwhile reading further on systems failure prevention.

If you have suffered a systems failure, check the Systems Failure Recovery  page.