If your office space is insured, you need not really worry about it. You will be reimbursed for every single penny. However, how do you account for the hours of hard work, effort, money and intellectual property that have actually gone into growing your business?
Well, when it can happen to you, it can happen to me or anybody for that instance. How do we recover from such a catastrophe is the question in place. And how soon can we do so is what really matters. If you want to recover from a disaster with ease, all that you need to do is to foresee it and plan in advance. And, that is what disaster recovery planning is all about.
While business heads and managers focus more on profits and expanding their businesses, they pay little attention to safeguarding their existing assets. I assure you that when a disaster strikes, none of them would really know as to how to react to that situation because that is something they might not have foreseen.
The first and foremost thing that these companies should be looking into is a disaster recovery plan. This is a plan that describes how your business would cope in the event of a disaster that strikes unexpectedly. Let us take a look at what a disaster recovery plan entails.
• Close Study of your Business
Every business has a core process. There are systems that support this core business process. You might want to study the impact when these systems come crashing down. You need to analyze the impact of such an event. Can your business continue to function even while these systems are being restored? What are the alternative measures that you need to take in order to achieve? These are some of the questions that you might be expected to answer.
• Make a List of Impending Disasters
Some examples of disasters that you might need to foresee are those of fire, earthquake, storms, virus attacks on your computer systems, external threat from hackers and a host of other things. You need to make a detailed plan as to how you would react to such situations so that the impact on your business systems is minimal.
• Disaster Recovery Team
You will be expected to form a disaster recovery team. This could be a team comprising of department heads. They should form a clear cut action plan for themselves and their departments on how they plan to recover when a disaster strikes them. As part of the disaster recovery plan, there should be provision for these heads to meet to check for the relevancy and accuracy of these plans. For instance, let us say the office has been shifted to the middle of a desert. You will know that if there was a clause in your plan to manage disaster due to floods, it might still not hold true. This might not be the best of examples but then you need to know on what we mean by maintaining the accuracy of the plan.
• Backup of IT Systems
Let us assume that you run an insurance business. Assume that you were struck by a deadly virus that wiped away all the data on your system. Do you have a backup of all your customer data including their personal information, policy numbers and the payments that they have made till this date. If not, you are in deep trouble.
You can backup your IT systems using a couple of data backup methods that are available today such as remote backup, creation of storage area networks and micro-filming of sensitive documents.
Identify People Risk
When we talk about disasters the only thing that might strike your mind are fire, earthquake, hurricanes and floods. But there is one primary risk which people usually leave out and it is about people risk. For all that you know, one of your key suppliers might run out of business or your best employee can quit his job with you. You need to be prepared for anything and everything. For the same reason, a disaster recovery plan is also known as a business continuity plan.
The Final Word
Plan today for the unknown tomorrow for tomorrow might be too late.
