Is Your Business Prepared for Nature’s Wrath?

Nature has a special talent for ruining plans. Sometimes nature can be annoying, like when it rains out a picnic. Other times, it can be devastating, like having your office inundated by a flood. Whatever nature throws at you, it's important to have a backup plan. This is true for both your picnic and your company's data.

Making preparations for your company to survive a natural disaster what is called a business continuity plan. What measures do you have in place for your business to continue operations in the face of a natural disaster, and is your plan designed to keep expensive downtime at a minimum? Without a business continuity plan in place, your company will be like a house built on a sandbar in a river; it's just a matter of time before the floodwaters take everything out.

There are three steps to creating a solid business continuity plan. We will walk you through the process by looking at planning, preserving, and passing your plan.

Planning
When it comes to planning, you have to think about the worst case scenario. Having first aid kits handy and the communication of evacuation procedures to everyone is a big part of the plan. A good business continuity plan goes beyond the disaster event; it also takes into consideration what needs to happen in order to get operations back online as soon as possible. This includes having a way to communicate with your customers that you have experienced a disaster, along with how long you expect it to take to get up and running again.

Preserving
If priority one is the safety of your people, then priority two is the preservation of your data. An office building is often associated as the biggest risk from a natural disaster because it's most visible; but your building can be insured and rebuilt, however, your data cannot be bought back with any amount of insurance money. Once your data is lost, you may figuratively and literally be up the creek.

Preserving your company's irreplaceable information is what a backup and disaster recovery solution is for. A BDR will backup all of your network's data at multiple times throughout the day, and store it at a secure offsite location. This way, even if your office is destroyed, you will still have the ability to access your important data. While you recover, you can use the BDR to access your needed files from a temporary location and keep operations humming.

Passing
With your business continuity plan in place, you will now want to test it regularly. This means holding fire drills, making sure that your employee's emergency contact numbers are up to date, and checking to make sure that your data backup solution is doing its job. It takes effort to do a fire drill and update contact forms, but with Computerware managing your backup solution, you can rest assured that your data will be properly backed up and accessible no matter what kind of disaster nature hurls at you.

Being prepared for a disaster is the difference between your business surviving a crisis, or having your life's work blown away. Computerware can help you implement a disaster recovery solution and /business continuity plan. Contact us at (703) 821-8200 to schedule a review of your business and learn what you will need to be ready for anything.