Swine flu: could your business cope with an outbreak?

If swine flu spreads in the way many experts are predicting, businesses will see a large number of staff requesting to work from home. So could your network cope with this eventuality?

After years spent dealing with worms and Trojan horses, businesses should be used to protecting themselves from viruses with peculiar names. But as world health officials continue to monitor the spread of swine flu, IT departments know this is one bug that will demand more by way of a deterrent than a timely antivirus update.

Indeed, if swine flu were to escalate to a pandemic as some experts were predicting when news of this deadly virus first broke from Mexico last month, the business continuity plans of many UK companies would be tested for the first time in a real-life situation.

Remote working as part of your business continuity planning

As the Department of Health delivers informational leaflets to every household and the first few precautionary school closures are announced, the number of workers wishing to - or being required to - stay at home in the coming months could quickly rise to a level which further threatens an already fragile economy. Not to mention your own business.

So could your network accommodate a sudden rise in demand for remote working? Many organisations have implemented remote desktop connections and VPNs (virtual private networks) in recent years but some have not. Equally some firms have given greater consideration to the security issues associated with inbound network connections than others.

Now would be an opportune time to review remote access to your company network. The current advice from leading health officials is to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. In fact, it need not be swine flu at all - remote working is now playing a key role in business continuity and disaster recovery plans for a wide range of scenarios.

If you have any questions on business continuity planning, please call and ask to speak to a Prosyn consultant today