Table of Contents
1. Cybercrime: Almost Every Company Is Affected
2. Business Continuity Management: High Resilience in an Emergency
Cybercrime: Almost Every Company Is Affected
Ransomware, phishing, or spoofing: According to a 2021 survey by Bitkom, 86% of more than 1,000 companies participating in the study were victims of cyberattacks. This translates to an increase of 16% in two years. The main reason for this growth is ransomware.
“Ransomware attacks are disrupting our economy with a force that is alarming, and companies of all sizes and in all sectors are affected.”Achim Berg, President of Bitkom
As employees are currently spending more working hours at home, the risk of cyberattacks has increased: Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, 59% of the participating companies that allow working from home have recorded an IT security incident that was caused due to remote work. Every other incident led to material or financial damage.
Business Continuity Management: High Resilience in an Emergency
However, cybercrime is not the only danger to a business. A company’s existence can also be threatened by fire, power outages, and pandemics, for example. Incidents like these often occur without warning and have the power to immediately bring businesses to a standstill. Despite highly sophisticated countermeasures, such crises cannot be fully prevented, which is why companies should prepare for the worst case and invest in business continuity management.
How Companies Ensure Business Continuity
Business continuity management aims to protect a company from any negative consequence in case of a crisis, to secure the company’s existence, and to limit material and financial damage.
A cornerstone of business continuity management is the business continuity plan. In the event of an emergency, this guideline ensures that all employees can access systems and tools relevant to their work and that regular business operation is continued without interruption.
How to Maintain Communication in the Event of a Crisis
Another important aspect of business continuity management is to maintain fast and efficient communication with internal and external parties. In this respect, it is key to have a tool at hand that allows secure and seamless communication and enables easy collaboration for employees.
Smartphone: The Most Important Tool in an Emergency
According to the “Emergency & Crisis Communications Report 2022” by the Business Continuity Institute (BCI), the mobile phone has replaced the laptop as the most important tool in business crisis management. Therefore, companies would do well to offer their employees an application they can easily access via smartphone.When determining a communication tool, companies should consider the following criteria:
- Consistent end-to-end encryption: Messages can only be read by the sender and the recipient – not even the service provider is able to decrypt them.
- Targeted top-down communication: Employees can be notified quickly and easily via news feeds, distribution lists, or chat bots, and they get all the information they need.
- Closed user group: Restricting communication to internal contacts inhibits external contacts from interacting with the closed user group in any way. Even in the event of a cyberattack, sensitive information cannot fall into the wrong hands.
- Privacy compliance: The use of the communication tool is fully compliant with progressive data protection laws such as the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Master Every Crisis with Threema Work
With an intuitive and privacy-compliant messenger such as Threema Work, companies are perfectly prepared for every crisis. Threema Work was designed for professional use and meets all requirements for a secure communication tool. With Threema Broadcast, employees and external partners can also be reached via news feeds , distribution lists, group chats, and chat bots.