Summary: The tools that run your business, like Microsoft 365, your accounting app, or your booking system, are reliable most of the time, but they do go down. When one does, work can stop for hours, and you often can’t do anything but wait for the provider to fix it. A simple plan keeps your team working and your customers informed while you wait.

Most of your business probably runs in the cloud now. Email, files, accounting, bookings, payments, it’s all online. Then one day a service goes down, and nobody can send an email, open a file, or take a payment.

It doesn’t take a hacker for this to happen. In July 2024, a faulty software update from the security company CrowdStrike crashed millions of Windows computers around the world in a few hours. Microsoft estimated it hit 8.5 million devices, grounding flights and stopping work at banks and hospitals.

Outages happen, even to the big names

Microsoft 365 itself has had days where email or Teams stopped working for hours. Internet providers have bad days too, and when yours does, everything online goes with it. Any tool you depend on can go down.

So much of a small business runs on a handful of online services now, and if one goes down, the work that depends on it stops until it’s back. Being with a big, well-known provider doesn’t protect you from this.

What an outage does to a small business

When a key service goes down, your team can’t get to email or files, so work stops. If your payment or booking system is offline, you can’t take money or appointments. Customers try to reach you and can’t, and you can’t reach them either. Staff end up sitting around waiting.

You usually can’t fix it yourself. When a big provider has an outage, all you can do is wait for them to sort it out. The goal of a plan is to keep working, and keep customers informed, until they do.

What a simple plan covers

A good plan answers these questions:

• Which tools are critical? List the handful of services that would stop the business if they’re down, like email, your payment system, or your booking tool. Ignore the ones you could live without for a day, and focus on the few that would halt the work.
• How will people keep in touch? Have a backup way to reach staff and customers that doesn’t depend on the tool that’s down. That might be phone numbers, a group chat on a different app, or text messages.
• What do you need reachable offline? Keep a copy of the essentials, like your customer contact list, key phone numbers, and important documents, somewhere you can open if the main system is down. A printout or a copy on a phone is enough.
• Who’s in charge? Decide who makes the decisions during an outage and who keeps customers updated. When it’s clear in advance, people act instead of waiting to be told.
• Where do you check, and who do you call? Know where to see whether it’s a wider outage, which is usually the provider’s status page, and who to call for help, which is usually your IT provider.

What to do the moment an outage hits

1. Check whether it’s just you. Look at the provider’s status page, or ask whether anyone else is having the same problem. If it’s a wider outage, there’s nothing to fix on your end, so stop trying.
2. Tell your team. Let people know what’s down and what to use instead, so nobody wastes an hour rebooting a laptop that was never the problem.
3. Switch to your backup way to communicate. Move to the phone, text, or another app so the team can still coordinate.
4. Tell customers if it affects them. If you can’t take bookings or payments, say so and tell them when to try again.
5. Note when it started and what’s affected. A couple of lines is enough. It helps you follow up afterward and spot anything that needs fixing once things are back.

A few things that make outages hurt less

• Keep key files available offline. With OneDrive or SharePoint, recent files can sync to the device so you can still open them when the service is down. Ask your IT provider to make sure this is set up.
• Have a backup way to get online. A mobile hotspot from a phone can get a few key people working again if your main internet drops.
• Know your status pages. Bookmark the status page for Microsoft 365 and your other main tools. It’s the fastest way to tell whether the problem is them or you.
• Keep contacts off the cloud. Have your important phone numbers and contacts somewhere that doesn’t need the internet, like a printout or your phone’s own contact list.
• Ask your IT provider about alerts. Many can set up a warning that tells you about an outage before your customers do.

Keep your plan on one page

Keep this to a single page, somewhere you can reach without your main systems, whether that’s printed or in a separate app. Write down your critical tools, your backup way to communicate, where the essentials live, who’s in charge, and who to call. Review it once or twice a year so the names and numbers stay current.

Frequently asked questions

Isn’t the cloud always available?

No. Cloud services are reliable, but they still have outages, and even the biggest providers go down sometimes. The CrowdStrike outage in 2024 took millions of computers offline in a few hours. It’s safer to assume an outage will happen eventually and have a plan for it.

What should a continuity plan include?

The basics: which tools are critical, a backup way to reach staff and customers, where to find essential information if the main system is down, who’s in charge during an outage, and who to call for help. One page is enough for most small businesses.

What if the internet itself goes down, not just one app?

Plan for that too. A mobile hotspot from a phone can get key people back online, and a phone call still works when your systems don’t. Keep important numbers and contacts somewhere that doesn’t need the internet.

How can my team keep working if Microsoft 365 is down?

It depends on the work, but options include using files already saved on a synced device, switching to phone or text to stay in touch, and handling anything urgent on paper until service returns.

How long do outages usually last?

There’s no set answer. Some are fixed in minutes, others take most of a day. That’s the reason to plan around them, since you can’t count on a quick fix and you can’t speed it up from your end.

Whose job is this?

Yours, with help from your IT provider. They can tell you which of your tools are most at risk, set up things like synced files and a status-page alert, and help you write a simple plan.

Sources and further reading

• Microsoft: Helping our customers through the CrowdStrike outage — Microsoft’s estimate that 8.5 million Windows devices were affected.
• CISA: Widespread IT Outage Due to CrowdStrike Update — the US cyber agency’s alert on the incident.

If you’re not sure which of your tools would hurt most if they went down, or you’d like help putting a simple plan together, your IT provider can work through it with you. And if you don’t have an IT provider, feel free to reach out to us and we’ll help you sort it.

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This Article has been Republished with Permission from The Technology Press.