Before Disaster Strikes

My laptop won’t be stolen. My building won’t burn down. My facility is secure. Our sprinkler system is foolproof.  Tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes…not a problem. You might even live in a part of the country that doesn’t experience many natural disasters and crime isn’t high.  But you are vulnerable! We all think “that won’t happen to me”. Then when it does, we sit there, dumbfounded and woefully unprepared.

Most small businesses that suffer a significant disruption never reopen their doors. Of those that do, most close their doors within 2 years of re-opening.  This is one time it is good to be in the minority.  Here are six steps you can take before disaster strikes:

1)      Invest the time to at least think about disaster recovery for your business (http://bit.ly/2vAUyO) and start to formulate a plan. If you need help or have questions, please ask your service provider. Feel free to ask me if you don’t have a provider.

1. Which processes are critical to your business?
2. Upon which technologies (computers, network, etc.) do these processes depend?
3. How quickly do you need to have service restored?

2)      Backup your data. If you’re using a backup appliance which you bought from the office supply store, be sure you send or take the backup offsite. It doesn’t help you if the data is in the office when it is destroyed.

3)      Test your data backup by restoring the data. The time to discover the data won’t restore properly is not in the middle of a real disaster.

4)      Get replacement value insurance to cover your computers and network hardware and software. Remember, the cost to replace the hardware and software will be at current prices. A cash value policy will only cover the original cost less depreciation.  You could end up spending a lot of money out of your own pocket.

5)      Document your hardware and software assets.  It simplifies dealing with the insurance company and gives you a starting point for replacing the assets.

6)      Secure a service provider to support you if you don’t have in-house support. Recovering from a disaster of any size is a complex task.  Most service providers are not able to take on ad-hoc recovery requests. You want someone in your corner before you need them.

These are steps every business can take to reduce the impact of a disaster. You will need to examine your business closely to cover any other gaps.  Preparing for a disaster is a little like buying insurance. You may never need it, but if you do it’s great to know you’re covered. To download the chapter, “When Disaster Strikes” from Navigating the I.T. Minefield: Straight Talk for the Small Enterprise, go to http://bit.ly/1VAZRX.

Wishing you safe passage through the I.T. Minefield!

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Leslie Knight is a small business consultant with over 20 years of experience in Information Technology management in Fortune 500 companies.  She applies her experience in Corporate America saving them millions to smaller entrepreneurial enterprises. She is also the author of Navigating the I.T. Minefield.

If you’d like to purchase a copy of Navigating the I.T. Minefield: Straight Talk for the Small Enterprise, please visit http://bit.ly/SNL4W.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 17th, 2009 at 2:17 pm and is filed under Business, Information Technology, disaster recovery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.