Prepare for Technology Crashes

Yesterday, a hacker from the group Anonymous took credit for a coordinated cyber attack against Internet domain registrar and web hosting company Godaddy.com. The denial-of-service attack caused a complete company-wide outage for several hours, and was the largest in the company's history.

The result was chaos. Millions of small business websites were down, including shopping carts and e-mail accounts. 

Regardless of your position on Godaddy or Anonymous,  September 10th cyber attack should be a wake up call for your business to prepare for these types of major outages, or one of the casualties is going to be your business. Outside of non-state groups like Anonymous, there are a number of nations that are known to recruit and train hackers with state complicity or encouragement: North Korea, China, Russia, among others.

Godaddy is unlikely to lose its company because of the outage. However, as a small company, you probably do not have the substantial financial resources to ressurect lost business. And if you do have the money, why not spend it in a way that ensures you can take advantage of your competitors' lost business?


Website/Shopping Cart

Simply put: If your site is down for hours, your competition is going to be cheering! Even if it is for a short time, your reputation can be damaged, and potential clients will go elsewhere. However, if your competitors are not prepared and yours is, this is a chance for you to increase your business and gain ground on them! But you have to have the adaquate preparation first.

If you aren't ready for a cyber attack, you risk wasting a lot of money, particularly if you have an online advertising presence. You will still be paying for the clicks and online time, but you will get ZERO conversions. That is money thrown away. Even if you do turn the advertising off in time, you will be losing valuable face time with potential clients.


E-mail

Using a personal e-mail address to send professional correspondence looks amateur and rookie. Not only is the e-mail address going to be foreign to clients, vendors and others, it might be placed automatically in the spam folder by a message server. This is the case with Hotmail addresses, because the server will associate the word "hot" with pornographic material.

One of the other issues is the content of personal e-mails are not appropriate to the professional setting, and are rarely corrected in time. More than once I have seen disaster-striken companies who (inadvertently) send out a client e-mail with something like this in the signature line:



Jon "Bubba" Smith
"As always, EAT the MEAT, TOSS out the BONES"




Is that the impression you want to make with a new client? In business we talk a lot about first impressions, and a signature line with "eating meat" and "tossing out the bones" is not a way to foster a professional, long-term relationship under any metric. This is a reason we create a clear differentiation between professional and personal e-mail addresses. During a disaster, this line does not need to be blurred.

This also does not account for the fact that you will now have to forward all the e-mails from the personal box to the professional box, will have to delete the message in the personal box, make sure you have not violated your privacy or terms of service, and then hope that your clients aren't e-mailing your people on their personal address.

However, this can all be avoided with some simple preparation.


Reversing Disaster - Basic Tips


1. When your company is facing a disaster, your company should seek to look even MORE professional, not less. Every e-mail, every message, every client interaction should be given the highest professional feel possible.


2. Don't put all your technology eggs in one basket. If you use one vendor for all your IT needs, this is an invitation for trouble. Spread out your platforms (hosting, cart, e-mail etc.) between multiple vendors. This will ensure you have a resiliency for your business.


3. Purchase a disaster plan from a reputable source. Don't waste your time buying templates or getting disaster plans from some fly-by-night business you find online. Get their credentials, make sure they understand your long-term needs, and stick with them. They will keep your business resilient.

Commit to a little preparation, and your company can easily Reverse Disaster.


Patrick Hardy, LL.M., CEM, ALEM