What’s Your Business’ Disaster and Recovery Plan?

A friend just asked me a question today, how much at risk am I during hurricane season given the fact that I am so close to the coast. Fact is, my home and my business is very much at risk. Every year when others are thinking of summer holidays, I think of emergency and disaster recovery. We have been very lucky for about 10 years now but that only lulls people into a false sense of security. Something I am always conscious of. You know what they say. It’s the calm before the storm so every year, at the back of my mind, I’m always preparing for the worst.

Photo by Kevin Finneran

You may not operate in a high risk area like I do, but, in the recent past we’ve had a lot of natural disaster all over the world. Some were totally unexpected and some were made worse as a result of apathy. They should be a sobering reminder to all of us that disaster does not always pick and choose who or where.

I am certainly not an insurance agent so you will do well to check with your agent before making any adjustments or addition to your policy. Here are some of the things that you should look into to prepare your business for disaster.

• Backup, then backup that backup and backup again.
• Keep a backup in your office/home and keep at least one backup off site too. This is one reason why I use services like Mozy because the backup is not located where I am. If I experience a total loss of my home (touch wood), I can always get my data from them.
• Discuss with your insurance agent what is a good protection plan for your business.
• Develop an emergency/evacuation plan for your family and decide ahead of time what you will bring and include some key items from your business.
• When you make an inventory of your home, include an inventory of the software that you run too. Very often the software installed on your computer(s) is worth many times more than your computer(s) itself.

This is by no means an exhaustive list but definitely a good place to start.