What Every Small Business Should Know About Disaster Recovery
Forty percent of small businesses shut down permanently after a disaster like Hurricane Katrina, according to federal estimates. But that doesn’t have to be the case. While disaster planning is traditionally more common among large companies with more resources, there are plenty of affordable steps small businesses can take to prepare for a calamity. We provide guidelines to help small business owners assess their preparedness and develop a disaster plan.
Every business can be hit with an incident serious enough to prevent it from continuing normal operations. Yet fewer than 40 percent of IT organizations have comprehensive, enterprise-wide disaster recovery plans that are up-to-date and rigorously tested. In our company look at the challenges of balancing risk against costs and offer guidelines for creating a disaster recovery plan.
Downtime is an expensive proposition, especially if your customers or the supply chain are impacted. Restoring critical business applications requires a quick response to minimize disruption. Having backup systems is key, but it’s not the only element.
Disaster recovery doesn’t mean just backing up data or systems. A truly comprehensive plan details how your business can recover from the loss of its complete computing infrastructure. Unfortunately, most small firms simply back up their systems with CDs and DVDs, thinking this will protect them from the loss of critical data. But this small-fry attitude can spell disaster. Because they can become corrupted over time, CDs and DVDs are not realizable for backup. Plus, it is hard to locate specific information on each disk. They are effective data archiving, but not backup.
Web-based storage can be economical for small companies. Outsourced data centers provide perhaps the most secure data backup, although you should frequently require proof that backups have been made on schedule.
No matter what disaster recovery plan you choose, it must become an everyday part of your company’s life. To learn more about disaster recovery plan (DRP), emergency response policy (ERP), and business continuity planning – contact us.