Disaster Recovery Best Practices

Organizations of all sizes are being targeted by cyber-criminals. A cyber breach is almost inevitable and you need to be truly prepared to respond. In a recent Harvard Business Review article, the authors found that many plans are developed in silos and too many plans sit on a shelf collecting dust. They lay out 10 principles to guide companies in creating and implementing a cyber-incident response plan. View MissionMode IT Disaster Recovery. 1. Assign an executive to take on responsibility for the plan. Executive support for the plan is critical....
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How your organization would respond if under attack from a physical assault or fire is obvious. Someone would dial 911 and emergency services would arrive quickly to assist. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said if your organization is the target of a cyber attack. Your best offense in this scenario is to create a resilient defense against cyber attacks. Let’s take a look at the top priorities any organization should adopt to build a reliable defense against cyber threats. Evaluate Your Skills, Fill Gaps It’s crucial to evaluate your security team’s core...
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The Business Continuity Institute’s recently released survey report, “Horizon Scan 2015” shows a shift in focus among business continuity practitioners away from weather and natural disaster-related concerns towards cyber security.  BCI conducts this global study across a wide variety of industries annually to track both threat concerns and business continuity best practices.  Some of the most notable findings in 2015 include: Fear of cyber-attacks has moved from the number three position to the top spot since 2013 with 43% of respondents reporting it is an “extreme concern” Supply chain disruption...
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Remember that October 1st retailer deadline to provide chip-friendly credit and debit card payment terminals?  Turns out it was a softie, as industry analysts estimate that only around 50% of US retailers have made the transition which is a major step for financial services providers and retailers to address the rising tide of credit card data breaches. EMV Card Transition Concerns Cost, obviously, has been a stumbling point for many retailers.  So, too, is the overlap with the start of the holiday shopping season, a time of long lines, impatience...
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Disaster Recovery System Although we might have a baseline understanding and systems in place to handle a disaster, the reality is that most businesses will experience significant downtime as a result of an unplanned disruption. Three in four companies worldwide have inadequate disaster recovery plans according to the Disaster Recovery Preparedness Council’s 2014 Annual Report. In the majority of cases, this is simply because companies do not have the time or resources to sufficiently safeguard all areas of their business. In order to secure your business, let’s take a look...
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We are led to believe that the U.S. government is ultra secure because it has some of the best protection in the world. Apparently, our cyber protection is not as perfect as we imagined since the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) recently had two major breaches of personal security. Officials from the OPM have commented with only extremely vague communication about the incident publicly, and on July 10th, Katherine Archuleta announced her resignation as the head of the OPM. At MissionMode, we believe that any business can learn from this incident...
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As we approach the one-year anniversary of Target’s 2013 Black Friday data breach that compromised 40 million credit card users, it doesn’t appear that shoppers are shying away from shopping via credit or debit cards to avoid a similar predicament this year. In fact, a new study by Deloitte found that 56 percent of consumers will shop at retailers that have experienced a data breach this past year, including Target, Home Depot, Kmart and Michaels, even though 42 percent said they are concerned about their personal data. These are similar...
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Hackers have found a new and very lucrative target: healthcare industry companies. The data breach issue is so troubling that the FBI just issued a federal law enforcement bulletin to healthcare industry companies warning of “malicious actors targeting healthcare-related systems”. Pervasive Problem Last year, the healthcare industry accounted for 44 percent of all breaches according to the Identity Theft Resource Center, making it the first time the healthcare industry surpassed all other industries in this measure. In contrast, the financial services industry represented just 3.7 percent of the total in...
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