A Practical Business Continuity Plan for 2026: How Irish SMEs Can Stay Resilient in a Changing World

Business continuity planning is no longer a once off exercise. It is a living process that protects your organisation from disruption, downtime and financial loss. As Irish businesses prepare for 2026, now is the ideal time to update continuity plans to reflect new risks, new working models and new security expectations.

Many businesses still assume that downtime only
comes from cyber attacks.

In reality, disruptions can be caused by hardware failure, accidental deletion, power outages, flood damage, supply chain delays or staff unavailability. A continuity plan ensures that your operations continue safely no matter what happens.

The first step is a detailed risk assessment. This involves identifying your most important systems, your critical data and the processes your business cannot function without. From there, you can map out recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives, which define how quickly systems must come back online and how much data can be lost without causing major damage.

A practical continuity plan must also include clear communication steps. Who makes decisions when something goes wrong. Who informs the team. Who contacts suppliers or clients. When communication plans are not documented, responses become slow and confusing during an incident.

Backup and recovery processes should be tested regularly. Many Irish organisations assume their backups work simply because they exist. The real test happens when you try to restore them. A reliable backup strategy should include secure cloud storage, multiple recovery points and regular testing.

Remote work must also be considered. Staff need secure access to files and systems even if the office is unavailable.

This requires strong identity management, conditional access, multifactor authentication and secure devices managed through platforms like Microsoft Intune.

Finally, your team must know the role they play. Staff training can significantly reduce the impact of incidents. Even the most advanced continuity plan can fail if employees do not understand what actions to take when something goes wrong.

With the right preparation, Irish SMEs can enter 2026 with greater confidence and resilience. VBT works with organisations across Ireland to design and maintain continuity plans that protect both operations and reputation.