When Your Business Continuity Plan Misses the Real Threat
Most business continuity plans are designed to protect against physical disasters. They include contingencies for floods, fires, snowstorms, and power outages. These threats are real, and planning for them is essential. But here’s the problem: while businesses are bracing for high winds and building-wide evacuations, they’re often overlooking the most likely type of disaster they’ll face—cyber attacks.
The internet doesn’t go underwater when it rains. Ransomware doesn’t care about the seasons. And in Canada, where wildfires and snowstorms may be front-of-mind, digital threats like data corruption, system lockdowns, and denial-of-service attacks have quietly become the disasters most likely to take your operations down.
A truly modern Business Continuity Plan (BCP) needs to go beyond the sandbags and the fire exits. It needs to prepare for the digital equivalent of a Category 5 storm.
Why Most BCPs Are Still Physically Focused
It makes sense that traditional disaster planning has a physical lens. Many of today’s business continuity policies were written a decade or more ago, when cybercrime was viewed as something that only targeted major corporations or government bodies. For many small and medium-sized businesses in Canada, planning for physical safety seemed both more urgent and more achievable.
So, BCPs include everything from evacuation procedures to emergency contact trees. There are backups for physical infrastructure, plans for alternate work locations, and recovery procedures for damaged buildings and equipment.
But the digital landscape has changed. Your building might stay standing, but your systems could be frozen, your data encrypted, and your customers locked out. If your continuity strategy doesn’t include digital recovery, it’s only telling half the story.
The Real Threats You’re More Likely to Face
Ransomware: The Digital Hostage Crisis
Ransomware is now one of the top threats facing Canadian businesses. In a ransomware attack, hackers encrypt your files and demand payment in exchange for a decryption key. These attacks can halt operations entirely, making it impossible to access records, fulfill orders, or communicate with customers.
In January 2023, the Toronto Public Library suffered a ransomware attack that disrupted services for weeks, impacting access to systems, public resources, and internal communications. While it’s easy to dismiss this as a problem for public institutions, the reality is that many SMBs have even fewer safeguards in place—and far less ability to recover.
DDoS Attacks: Paralyzing Access with a Flood
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks occur when hackers overload a website or system with traffic, causing it to slow down or crash. They’re often used as a smokescreen for other malicious activities or simply to cause chaos.
In February 2022, multiple Canadian banking websites—including RBC and BMO—were targeted by DDoS attacks that temporarily blocked access for thousands of customers. While major banks can withstand and recover from these incidents quickly, smaller businesses may not be so lucky. If your website or portal is your primary way of serving clients, even an hour of downtime can be costly, and not just financially.
Data Loss and Corruption: Silent But Devastating
Not all cyber disasters come from external threats. Accidental deletion, failed updates, or corrupted files can be just as harmful as any hacker. Without reliable backups and a recovery plan, businesses risk losing critical data forever.
In 2021, a private health clinic in British Columbia suffered data loss due to a failed server migration. Patient records, scheduling data, and billing systems were affected, causing weeks of disruption and requiring costly manual workarounds. While this wasn’t caused by malware, it still constituted a digital disaster, and one that wasn’t accounted for in their continuity planning.
Why Digital Threats Deserve a Seat at the Planning Table
They’re More Common Than Natural Disasters
Fires and floods may happen once in a business’s lifetime, if at all. Cyber attacks? They happen every day. In fact, 2024 data from the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security shows that small and medium businesses are increasingly targeted, with incidents rising steadily year over year.
The Recovery Timeline Is Often Longer
Unlike physical damage—which can be inspected and repaired—digital damage can take longer to detect, diagnose, and resolve. A fire-damaged server room might be replaced in a few days. Recovering from a ransomware attack could take weeks or months, especially if backups are unavailable or compromised.
The Financial and Legal Fallout Is Serious
A data breach or cyber attack doesn’t just shut your doors temporarily—it can trigger fines, lawsuits, and customer churn. For example, when Indigo Books & Music was hit by ransomware in 2023, the company faced weeks of operational disruptions, loss of customer trust, and a need for costly incident response and forensic analysis. Smaller businesses may never recover from the reputational damage alone.
Updating Your BCP to Include Cyber Resilience
Start with a Broader Risk Assessment
If your BCP only accounts for physical threats, it’s time to widen the lens. Include scenarios such as ransomware attacks, network outages, phishing incidents, and insider threats. Map out which business functions are most vulnerable to digital disruption, and what the real consequences would be.
Ask yourself: What if our customer database were encrypted tomorrow? What if our website went down during peak hours? What if all staff were locked out of our systems for two days?
Revisit Backup and Recovery Strategies
Not all backups are created equal. Relying on a single cloud provider or backing up to local hardware stored in the same office is a recipe for disaster. A modern backup strategy includes multiple layers—often referred to as the 3-2-1 rule: three copies of your data, on two different media types, with one stored offsite or offline.
But just having backups isn’t enough—they need to be tested. Recovery drills should be scheduled regularly to ensure they’re working, accessible, and usable when it counts.
Align Your Cybersecurity Incident Response with Your Continuity Plan
Cyber attacks don’t happen in a vacuum. Your BCP should work hand-in-hand with your cybersecurity incident response plan. This means assigning clear roles, outlining who communicates with stakeholders, and knowing how to isolate affected systems to prevent further damage.
If an attack happens at 3 am, who responds? Who can authorize taking systems offline? Who contacts clients, regulators, or vendors? Those decisions should be mapped out well before anything goes wrong.
Train for Digital Disasters, Not Just Fire Drills
Most businesses do fire drills, but how many run simulations for ransomware or a phishing attack? Tabletop exercises should include digital threats. Walk through what happens if email systems go down, if payroll is disrupted, or if customer data is breached.
These sessions help identify gaps, improve response time, and ensure staff know how to act under pressure. After all, panicked improvisation isn’t a continuity strategy—it’s a liability.
Reframing Business Resilience for the Digital Age
We don’t need to get rid of the traditional components of a Business Continuity Plan. Fire safety, physical security, and disaster relocation still matter. But ignoring cyber threats leaves a gaping hole in your defenses.
Canadian businesses are no longer immune to cybercrime simply because they’re small or off the radar. Criminal groups operate indiscriminately, and any business with data, digital assets, or a web presence is fair game.
Building cyber resilience into your BCP doesn’t just protect your operations—it protects your staff, your customers, and your reputation. And it makes your business less reactive and more prepared in a world where digital disruptions are more common than ever.
Final Thought: Don’t Wait for the Next Breach to Build Your Plan
The businesses that survive major disruptions—whether they come from a wildfire or a ransomware gang—are the ones that plan ahead. The ones that assume the worst will happen, and then build the tools, teams, and responses needed to bounce back.
Your continuity plan is only as strong as its blind spots. And in the current environment, ignoring cyber threats isn’t just risky—it’s outdated.
At Adaptive Office Solutions, cybersecurity is our specialty. We prevent cybercrimes by using analysis, forensics, and reverse engineering to detect malware attempts and patch vulnerability issues. By investing in multilayered cybersecurity, you can leverage our expertise to boost your defenses, mitigate risks, and protect your data with next-generation IT security solutions.
Every device connecting to the internet poses a cybersecurity threat, including that innocent-looking smartwatch you’re wearing. Adaptive’s wide range of experience and tools fills the gaps in your business’s IT infrastructure and dramatically increases the effectiveness of your cybersecurity posture.
To schedule a Cyber Security Risk Review, call the Adaptive Office Solutions’ hotline at 506-624-9480 or email us at helpdesk@adaptiveoffice.ca