Crafting 3 Core IT Plans with Thriveon

Robust IT plans are essential for businesses to safeguard their operations, data and reputation. Hundreds of policies exist, from social media and artificial intelligence (AI) to cybersecurity and data backup. These plans provide a structured approach to managing IT resources, ensuring compliance and preparing for unexpected disruptions, whether they’re a security breach, cyber attack or unforeseen issues like the recent CrowdStrike outage.

At Thriveon, we not only understand the critical nature of IT plans but also excel in crafting and implementing them tailored to our clients’ individual needs. Our expertise in this field is unparalleled, giving you the confidence that your IT plans can handle anything. Though we focus on three core IT plans, we can help you create numerous policies to best assist your company.

Read: Planning an Effective IT Strategy

The Importance of IT Plans

Effective IT plans serve as the backbone of a company’s IT strategy. They define the rules and procedures for various aspects of IT management, making them crucial for maintaining business operations, protecting sensitive data and ensuring compliance with industry regulations.

The Three Core IT Plans

At Thriveon, we pride ourselves on a comprehensive and client-centric approach to IT plan development and management. We work closely with our clients to understand their specific needs, risks and business objectives. This thorough process ensures that we create tailored IT plans that prepare you for potential IT disruptions and enable swift and effective recovery.

Our process focuses on three core IT plan that every company needs: business continuity, disaster recovery and incident response plans.

• Business continuity plan (BCP): This ensures that essential business functions can continue before, during and after a disaster. We start by identifying the basic functions that must continue, then evaluate potential risks and their impact on business operations. The plan includes strategies for alternative work locations, backup systems and communication plans, as well as regular training and testing to ensure employees are prepared. 
• Disaster recovery (DR) plan: This outlines the steps to restore IT systems, operations and data after a disruptive event. By defining recovery objectives, strategies and procedures, we create a detailed plan to restore IT systems and data and minimize downtime. The plan includes regular data backups, data replication and redundant systems.
• Incident response plan (IRP): This details the immediate actions to take when an IT incident occurs, aiming to minimize damage and recover quickly. We establish a framework for responding to IT incidents, including key response team members, communication protocols and step-by-step response actions. The plan includes detection and analysis protocols to help identify incidents, as well as containment, eradication and recovery steps.

Other IT Policies

In addition to the core three IT policies, Thriveon develops other essential policies: acceptable use policy and artificial intelligence policy.

• Acceptable use policy: This defines acceptable and unacceptable use of IT resources, including social media and remote access. It is often included in the HR handbook to ensure all employees know the guidelines. It also includes mobile device management (MDM), which addresses the management and security of mobile devices used within the organization.
• Artificial intelligence policy: Thriveon is currently engaging with clients to understand their use of AI and their perspectives on it. We are starting to implementing policies to ensure employees utilize AI responsibly and effectively. This includes clear objectives, preparing relevant data, selecting appropriate AI tools, assembling a capable implementation team, testing in controlled environments and regularly auditing and updating AI systems.

Implementation, Tabletop Exercises and Continuous Improvement

Once the plans are drafted, we collaborate with our clients to ensure they are reviewed, approved and implemented effectively, ensuring they are aligned with your overall business goals.

However, a unique aspect of our service is the tabletop exercises we run with our clients; each exercise is customized based on potential impacts. These 90-minute exercises simulate real-world scenarios to test the plans’ effectiveness and identify possible gaps. We invite key decision-makers and executives to participate, guiding them through four phases. Each phase represents a progression of the event, encouraging participants to think critically about their response actions and time. The goal of the tabletop is to identify what works, what doesn’t and what needs modification.

After the tabletop exercise, we evaluate the outcomes and identify areas for improvement. We also conduct annual reviews and updates to keep the plans current and relevant to evolving threats and business changes.

Why Thriveon?

Unlike other managed service providers (MSPs) that charge extra for plan creation and tabletop exercises, Thriveon includes these services in our comprehensive IT management package. Our commitment is to set our clients up with executable plans, run scenarios to identify potential weaknesses and continuously improve the plans.

By choosing Thriveon, businesses can rest assured that they are equipped with the most effective IT plans to navigate any IT disruptions, maintain business continuity and minimize downtime. Our customized approach, continuous improvement process and inclusive services make us the ideal partner for any company’s IT needs.

Don’t wait until it’s too late – schedule a meeting now to safeguard your organization.