It's important to keep in mind, business continuity is far more than a buzzword – it is an essential piece of running any enterprise. From retail to logistics, financial, legal, healthcare, etc., if a company cannot use its technology, it is effectively shut down. This is why companies need to have a solid business continuity management (BCM) plan in place and ensure they spend on it and realize it is a part of business insurance.

Insurance refers to a company that pays you if something bad happens. Effective BC can be an even better use of funds because it prevents problems from happening in the first place.

In a recent Continuity Central  survey of users primarily in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia, it was found 31% of organizations will spend more on BCM in 2019 than in 2018. Lack of budget is the biggest concern among respondents.

The question worth asking is whether around a third of companies spending more on BCM is a good or bad percentage. The reality is, companies are beginning to understand there are many threats to their business as they read news stories about other companies who have been brought down because they were not prepared.

In particular are recent earthquakes in areas which didn’t see them before. For example the one this week  on the east coast. Other challenges include cryptomining, freak weather thanks to increasing climate risk, IoT hijacking, nation-state hacking, government shutdown issues and Silicon Valley growth.

It is fantastic to see 28% of organizations will add to their business continuity teams – a healthy number which is similar to the 31% mentioned above.

Other important details from the poll include:

• 24.5 percent will be making major revisions to BCM strategies and/or business continuity plans;
• 11 percent of respondents expect their organization to implement new business continuity software during 2019;
• 9 percent expect their organization to conduct more business continuity tests and exercises during 2019
• 9 percent will be making significant changes to their crisis management capabilities;
• 8 percent will be giving more attention to managing cyber security and cyber risks;
• 8 percent will be making a major revision to IT DR or ICT continuity strategies;
• 5 percent say that there will be a move towards enterprise wide resilience, organizational or operational resilience.

Overall it is really good news that companies are more aware than ever of the risks in not investing in BCM. Let’s hope in the war on natural disasters and hackers, business has a more successful 2019 than 2018.

The goal of every company should be living through terrible weather at their headquarters or data center location and being able to laugh it off.