Why Business Continuity Planning of IT infrastructure is a must for Singaporean companies to survive Covid-19

Earlier this month, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Covid-19 a global pandemic. This news has sent shock waves across the world and has forced governments to implement swiftly several measures to contain the virus. For example, in Singapore, the Ministry of Health (MOH) has advised employers to use videoconferencing wherever possible, allowing employees to commute at off-peak hours and other social distancing measures. The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) has advised special work-from-home arrangements to be made for older and pregnant employees, and those with underlying medical conditions. As a result, many Singaporean companies now face challenges in managing their workforces remotely and stay productive at the same time.

What does this mean for businesses? 

During this global health crisis, high application availability is imperative for businesses to comply with regulations, mitigate potential disasters, and achieve business continuity. High-availability IT solutions not only keep essential applications up and running but also keeps entire business operation up and running too. 

Amid the crisis, the CIO plays an incredibly important role in steering the ship. CIOs need to deploy fast and responsive IT solutions to get ahead of the potential issues and minimise any business disruption and downtime that the unprecedented circumstances may cause. Fault-tolerant servers and continuous availability solutions are two examples of how the right IT infrastructure can help companies adapt to this changing environment and stay productive in this new increasingly remote workforce setting. 

If companies don’t have the right IT infrastructure and systems in place, remote workforces will present many challenges. For example, at home, employees usually have access to much lower capacity broadband plans than in offices, and many people will be accessing a single Wi-Fi network at the same time. This will cause network congestion and drastically slow down the internet connection speed.

Any downtime experienced in critical business applications as a result of network congestion as more employees work remotely has far-reaching, significant economic, security and legal consequences. 

In previous research conducted by EMC (2014), it was found that data loss and downtime cost Singapore enterprises US$1b for 12 months alone. And 66% of enterprises surveyed experienced data loss or downtime during that time. The good news is that Singapore has come a long way in five years. Whilst in 2014, almost half of Singaporean companies lacked a disaster recovery plan, many are now confident of recovering from IT disruptions thanks to advances in technology and infrastructure. 

So where do IT leaders need to consider as they prepare their businesses for a changing operational model? 

Today’s advanced technologies easily accommodate an increasingly remote workforce. Access to computers, cloud services, and high-speed internet connections makes remote working a viable option to slow the spread of Covid-19. 

However, home deployment poses some cybersecurity risk to companies. Business leaders must ensure their employees are up to speed on basic security hygiene with strong passwords and multifactor authentication. WHO recently released an advisory warning people to avoid fraudulent emails about Covid-19 as security firms in the US identified multiple phishing scams capitalising on people’s panic over the pandemic. 

An online handbook on dealing with security issues goes a long way for employees to familiarise with the dos and don’ts of securing their emails, passwords and work assets. As a general rule of thumb, do not reply to suspicious emails with sensitive and financial information and avoid clicking on unfamiliar URLs. Instead, encourage staff to have such emails verified by a security professional before responding and to change passwords regularly. 

Business leaders should also consider virtual private networks (VPN) that allows the remote sharing of data, that is almost as secure as a shared private network. However, several popular VPN services were found to have critical vulnerabilities. Managers should ensure the most up-to-date version of VPN services for employees. 

Leaders should encourage employees to use encrypted messaging services for communication. Other than consumer software like Whatsapp, which is now proving to be a frequent target for hackers, business-centric encrypted services are also available now. In the event of a breach due to remote working conditions, it is prudent for enterprises to standby with a recovery plan. 

No matter how far we try, home security systems are often not secure enough for most professional applications. Cloud storage and connectivity does not promise cybersecurity. Business leaders can consider managing data though with edge servers, which offers enhanced security benefits and access to real-time data, which is particularly important during this time for sectors such as healthcare and pharmaceutical. 

Edge technology’s self-monitoring and self-protecting capabilities make it ideal for unmanned stations or remote locations with limited IT resources. Remotely managing edge infrastructure will immediately connect operators with off-site experts to resolve and even avoid downtime events in real-time. Employees and IT staff can then be free from troubleshooting operations to focus on other priorities and value-added activities. 

Business continuity planning for IT infrastructure 

Many of the region’s largest companies cannot afford to be offline, even during a global crisis. IT solutions are now required to deliver never anticipated needs with service consistency and full visibility into the network, cloud and applications. Edge solutions provide more bandwidth flexibility to meet spikes in demand, and better control over the network with greater visibility into issues. 

Technology partners are now addressing the growing need for more intelligent systems with a mix of edge and cloud-based technologies. Fault-tolerant solutions, with self-monitoring, self-diagnosing and self-healing servers are essential for digital transformation initiatives for the future. They also prepare us for global emergencies such as virus outbreaks where continuous IT availability is mission-critical to ensure business continuity. 

These new technologies are easy to deploy and maintain, more secure and remote-friendly than legacy systems. With fail-proof IT support, business leaders can be assured of better performance, enhanced IT availability and improved manageability. They can then accelerate time-to-value, maximise revenues, increase efficiency with processes and productivity of employees, even in time of unexpected crisis.

Businesses will get through these times and there will likely be a market rotation afterwards. Companies with strong IT continuity planning will recover faster and will be in a much better position to increase market share when customer demand returns.