Every business needs to have a comprehensive disaster recovery plan. There are dozens of different reasons to implement one: natural disasters, fire, malfunction, theft -- each having its own protocol to follow. Many business owners have pushed off implementing a disaster recovery plan, fearing that it is too time-intensive and too much to manage. But what happens when that disaster strikes? What will you do?

The Importance of Having a Disaster Recovery Plan

There is a substantial amount of news coverage on the latest hurricanes to threaten the United States, Harvey and Irma. Thousands of companies are literally underwater and there is several million dollars worth of damage caused to businesses, let alone homes. If a disaster were to strike your office, would your business be another statistic?

The technical research company, Gartner, reports that 70% of organizations that have gone down for 96 or more hours will not recover. 

The only thing harder than planning for an emergency
is explaining why you didn't." - Unknown 

It is much easier than you may think for a catastrophic disaster to happen to your organization's technology. Take, for example, the possibility of an employee accidentally downloading ransomware on a company computer that transfers to each computer in the network. A simple mistake could quickly and easily take down the entire business if there was no backup or recovery plan in place.

Of course, there are much more malicious risks, as well - disgruntled workers, thieves, and even terrorism can all be threats to your company's data.

Implementing a Disaster Recovery Plan

Planning for a disaster is complex, stressful, and time-consuming. However, much like taxes, it simply needs to be done. Disaster recovery and business continuity is all about reducing or completely eliminating downtime and data losses. In order to protect your business, you need to start coming up with a plan now:

• Define the most likely disasters to happen to your business and create specific plans for each one
• Have a list of designated alternative working location(s)
• Identify all critical personnel and resources for each department of your business
• Develop an evacuation plan as well as a meeting location for all office personnel
• Create a plan for employee communications to relay critical information
• Have an easily accessible list of contact information for all affected parties not attached to your main server
• Document locations of all places where data is stored both in-house and in a data center

Of course, this is not an exhaustive list. If you are looking to implement a recovery plan for your business now, we can help. Schedule a 30-minute meeting with our VP of Managed Services, Mark McBee, to get started.

How Prepared is Your Business?

At one point in time it was commonplace for businesses to keep all of their company information in a single, on-premise storage device. In fact, about forty percent of businesses still do. But what would happen if a fire, flood, or tornado swept through and destroyed the office? All of your data would be gone forever. Now it is recommended to keep at least one copy of all of your data in a completely separate, secure location.

But beyond just having your data backed up, do you have an emergency preparedness plan in place? What would you do if there were mandatory evacuations forcing most of your employees to leave the area? Is there a plan for a lightning strike that would damage all of your electronics?

A little planning can go a long way. To minimize your risk and increase chances of recovery, you can take steps to prepare. Once you have a comprehensive plan developed and implemented it will be quicker and easier to return to normal operations.