Natural disasters and inclement weather can disrupt business operations and put company assets at risk, including hardware infrastructure. Even if business facilities are not directly affected, these events can hinder communication via power outages, delay the ability to access onsite locations and pose local security challenges.

By far, however, technical failures and cyberattacks constitute the lion’s share of disruption that can threaten a company’s bottom line and ability to survive. These situations are often caused by human errors, such as device mismanagement. According to Palo Alto, nearly half of the security incidents (44%) they investigated in 2024 involved human activity with a web browser, malicious redirects and malware downloads. According to InfoSec, 74% of data breaches involve some human element, such as clicking on a phishing link.

For seasonal businesses such as a fireworks retailer or a vacation destination organization, just two or three hours of downtime could be disastrous and result in a significant hit on their bottom line. For most businesses, navigating through a disaster or challenge is a likely scenario at some point during its existence. Being as prepared as possible may mean the difference between a thriving future or failure.

To help protect your business, consider the following as an approach to planning, responding and recovering to an any-event scenario.

Step one: Create or update your business continuity plan.

Whether a natural or a human-caused disaster, having an updated business continuity plan (BCP) is critical to sustaining or quickly resuming operational functions in the face of a disruption. A BCP can be expensive and take a lot of time to develop and maintain, but it can also have a huge return on investment and, most importantly, protect employees, customers and data.

How do you begin the process of implementing a BCP? Fortunately, there are many services that can help document a plan. Some cloud providers can add this capability since cloud adoption is often done to ensure business continuity planning for IT operations. But this is just the starting point of the project, as there is still planning that needs to be done for on-premises locations. You’ll want to refer to sample guides or other sources. If you already have a plan, consider if it’s time to modify all or portions of it.

Here’s a sample BCP outline from Kon Karakasidis:

• Obtain top management approval and support.

• Establish a business continuity planning committee.

• Perform business impact analysis.

• Evaluate critical needs and prioritize business requirements.

• Determine the business continuity strategy and associated recovery process.

• Prepare business continuity strategy and its implementation plan for executive management approval.

• Prepare business recovery plan templates and utilities, finalize data collection and organize/develop the business recovery procedures.

• Develop the testing criteria and procedures.

• Test the business recovery process and evaluate test results.

• Develop/review service level agreements (SLAs).

• Update/revise the business recovery procedures and templates

Step two: Respond to the event and implement your business continuity plan.

In the event of a natural disaster:

• Access immediate damage to physical location(s) using drone- and sensor-based technology, if available.

• Activate remote work capabilities should it be necessary.

• Refer to pre-established repair and restoration plans.

• Visit local, state and federal websites (such as FEMA) to review the resources, grants and loans that may be available to you.

• Document and film damage for insurance claims.

• Notify your insurance company.

• Schedule office repairs, if needed.

• Access equipment, infrastructure and data availability.

• Adhere to regulatory compliance management to ensure safety standards are met before reopening.

• In the event of a cyberattack or systems failure:

• Find the virus and prevent it from spreading.

• Determine what was lost.

• Collaborate with law enforcement.

• Consult with legal counsel.

• Access your offline backups.

• Resecure your environment.

• Adopt multifactor authentication if not already in place.

Step three: Post-event recovery and return to normal operations.

Recovery after a disaster:

• In the event of a cyber incident, get help from a cybersecurity expert or company to check the damage, recover lost data and improve your company's security posture.

• Deploy all teams and planning completed during the BCP process.

• Establish communication with employees, customers, vendors and the public when necessary.

• Ensure your workplace and immediate surroundings are safe and secure for returning employees.

• Reestablish your supply chain.

• Research new physical locations.

• Take advantage of other locations not affected by the disaster.

• Take advantage of remote access capabilities that have been developed.

• Evaluate how effective your response efforts have been and pinpoint areas that require improvement.

• Integrate insights gained from the incident into your plan to strengthen your organization’s readiness for future cyber events.

Whether natural or a cyber event, disruption from a disaster poses substantial threats to businesses. Readiness through an organized and comprehensive BCP ensures that a company can sustain operations and quickly recover by identifying essential needs, outlining communication strategies and setting recovery time objectives.

By implementing protection processes, such as regular software updates, employee training and investing in cyber insurance, businesses can defend their operations from digital and physical risks. Planning, implementing and continuously updating these measures will help businesses navigate sudden challenges and recover rapidly and successfully.