Disaster Recovery

Creating a Business Continuity Plan For Your Small Business

Business Continuity Planning Process Is your business prepared for any type of disaster? Even though small businesses may not have as many employees or as much equipment, they are still as vulnerable to disaster as a large corporation. And if your business office were to be destroyed by a tornado, you could lose valuable business if you don’t plan ahead. But many businesses don’t want to take the time. And they don't want the expense to prepare a business continuity plan. But can you really afford not to make one?

Make a List of All Possible Disasters

The best place to start is to list different types of disasters. Try to determine what could be lost in each case. And list what you can do to prevent that loss. A flood will require different strategies from a power outage or a fire. Next, try to estimate how long it would take, and how much it would cost for you to get your business up and running again.

Communication

The middle of a crisis is not the time to frantically search for phone numbers. Even small businesses need emergency contact numbers. Have all emergency contact numbers posted or programmed into every phone. And do you have an alternate mode of communication should your main phone lines shut down? The same principal applies to email and fax. Make arrangements regarding communication. This is critical to keeping your business running smoothly. And communicating with staff and clients means the difference between complete shutdown or a minor interruption.

Preserving Your Data

In the event of a disaster, it is important to know that everything you need to function as a business is available. Identify all vital systems, documents, and data. While it is important for every business to backup their data on a regular basis, what if a fire destroyed your office? For this reason, offsite storage is critical to preserving your business’ valuable information. Offsite data storage allows to access to all of your stored data from any computer and from anywhere in the world.

A Temporary Worksite

It is also important to plan for a temporary worksite. Can you continue smooth operation if your office is shut down? Then, storing products in a second location can allow you to maintain your regular business schedule.

Test Your Plan

One of the keys to successful disaster recovery is testing your business continuity plan on a regular basis. It is important that you and your staff know exactly what to do. And it is important to know where to go. Or, how to access the necessary items you need to keep your business running smoothly to the outside world. Even if you are standing in the middle of a disaster! Schedule regular plan tests to ensure that everyone in your office is on the same page and ready should disaster strike. Hopefully, you will never have to use your business continuity plan, but it is smart business to be prepared for any emergency should one arise. Click here to learn how [contentblock id=company] can help keep your business running in the event of disruption or disaster with our Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning Services for your business in [contentblock id=location].
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How to Create a Basic Business Disaster Recovery Plan in 4 Steps

Loss of data is a common problem for businesses. Fortunately, it's a problem that can easily be avoided with the correct preparation. While devastating amounts of data can be lost during catastrophes like hurricanes, terrorist attacks, fires and floods - it doesn't take such large events to cause a business to lose important data. It can be as simple as dropping a laptop to the floor, or a power surge that results in burning out a storage device. If you don't have your crucial data backed up, even a small situation can turn into a disaster. That's when having a disaster recovery plan for your business can help.

The Statistics

If you still think natural disasters are the leading causes of data loss - and that the chances of it happening to you are pretty slim, take a look at the results from a study by Strategic Research Corporation of the leading causes of business continuity and disaster recovery incidents:
  • Hardware Failures (servers, switches, disk drives, etc) - 44%.
  • Human Error (mistakes in configurations, wrong commands issued, etc) 32%
  • Software Errors (operating systems, driver incompatibility, etc)14%
  • Viruses and Security Breach (unprotected systems are always at risk) 7%
  • Natural Disasters 3%

Establishing a disaster recovery plan can be done in the following four steps:

1) Take a potential risk inventory.
Make a list of every potential cause of data loss and the solutions to each. Your list should include losses that won't affect the business very much, and those that would shut the business down temporarily or permanently. Information Technology experts can assist you with creating the potential risk inventory - as they will have the knowledge and experience to identify possibilities that you are not likely to think of but need to plan for all the same. These IT experts will also be able discuss preventative solutions to guard against each type of potential data loss.
2) Rate each of your potential data loss situations.
How likely is it for each of the items on your risk inventory to occur? Well, rating them in order of importance and likeliness to occur will help you determine where to focus your disaster recovery plan efforts.
3) Develop your disaster recovery plan.
First, go through each of your potential risks and their solutions. Then, determine how long it would take you to recover. Could your business be offline for 24 hours? A week? Well, depending on the nature of your business, being offline for even just 24 hours could result in your losing customers to your competition. So look at ways to reduce the length of time it would take you to recover from each type of data loss risk.
4) Put your disaster recovery plan to the test.
Once you've created your plan of action for recovering lost data, you should test your solutions. A disaster recovery plan is just a plan until it can be tested and proven. Click here to learn how [contentblock id=company] can create a business disaster recovery plan for you with our Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Services for your business in [contentblock id=location].
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Disaster Recovery Planning

You Need A Disaster Recovery Plan

Consider last year's Hurricane Sandy. What about recent tornados? And other natural disasters? Well, they have truly put things in to perspective. So businesses need to prepare. And the safety of your employees is your top concern. Next, follow the disaster recovery plan! Protect your data and applications that run it. Call us about your disaster recovery plan audit. Disaster Recovery Planning   Tech is used to process data. Employees use e-mail and VOIP systems. Electronic data interchange (EDI) transmits data. And this includes orders and payments from one company to another. Servers store your info. They also store large amounts of data. Computers and other devices manage  info for your business. So what do you when your tech stops working?  http://www.ready.gov/business/implementation/IT
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