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Can Your Small Business Survive A Disaster?

By Steve Miklos

It wasn't long ago that formal disaster recovery planning was limited to only large corporations. A disaster recovery project team was created and charged with the mission of protecting the corporate assets. It was their job to ensure that the corporation could survive all types of disasters; from earthquakes and fires to computer crashes. While smaller business owners understood the concept, it was not cost effective for them to allocate valuable time and limited resources to such a large project. Consequently, these businesses chose to ignore their vulnerability to major disasters and instead focus on the more basic protective procedures such as performing data backups on tape. Is it any wonder that most small businesses go out of business after suffering a major disaster?

Fortunately, times have changed. Advances in technology now make it easier for all businesses to maintain a simple and affordable disaster recovery program. The following is a basic checklist for disaster recovery of a non-manufacturing business.

Disaster Recovery Plan Checklist

Phone list of all key employees
Maintain a current list of key employee phone numbers. The list should include home phone numbers as well as cell phone numbers. It is recommended that all key employees carry a business card size list with them and keep one at their homes.

List of key contacts and accounts
Maintain a current list of all key vendor and customer contacts along with their phone numbers. This list should be kept current and safely stored offsite.

Complete list of all computer hardware
In order to replace your computers, it is important that you maintain a complete listing of computer hardware currently being used by your company. This list should be kept current and safely stored offsite.

Sample of all non-computer generated critical business forms
With the increasing dependence on computers in the workplace, the majority of all forms used by businesses today are computer generated. However, in the event that your business is still dependent on forms that are not computer generated, it is imperative that a sample of those critical forms be safely stored offsite.

Phone list for temporary office space
Previously, one of the most difficult issues surrounding a formal disaster plan was locating suitable office space, securing telecommunication lines, and acquiring office equipment. Fortunately, the increasing popularity of telecommuting has created a new business market of providing fully equipped temporary offices. Now, this once difficult and time sensitive task has been reduced to just one simple phone call.

Fully automated backup and offsite storage service
At the foundation of all sound disaster recovery plans is the ability to quickly restore a company’s critical data and programs. The ability of a company to survive a disaster is dependent on the time taken to restore computer operations. Today’s sophisticated backup software, combined with increased communication transmission speeds and the Internet, now provide businesses with a superior alternative to the traditional backup methods. Backups are fully automated and are no longer dependent on the user to initiate the backup process. In addition, all data can now be transmitted to a secure offsite data storage center for easy retrieval. No more tapes to store and more importantly, no more delays waiting for your computer consultant to restore files from them. New replacement computers can now be completely cloned with the same look and feel of the old computers in a reasonably short time from anywhere in the world.

Disaster recovery planning is no longer just for the large corporation; it is for everyone. Investing a little time on a disaster recovery plan can help ensure that your business can get back up and running if you should experience a disaster. Remember, a disaster recovery plan is like having catastrophic health insurance for your business. While you hope that you will never need it, you cannot afford to do without it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Steve Miklos is a co-founder of BackUp Solutions, Inc. BackUp Solutions, Inc. is a service provider of fully automated backups and off-site storage solutions. For more information please visit their web-site at www.backuphelp.com.

riskVue | The webzine for risk management professionals
October 2001