Disasters and the resulting downtime could be hazardous to the financial well-being of a business. The challenge is many people think of disasters such as the Northeast Blackout (2003) or Hurricane Katrina (2005).  Events of this magnitude are rare for the normal business. Local power failures, telecom failures, local flash floods, and actions by a disgruntled employee are the common challenge for the average business. 

Some business owners, executive directors, board members and/or key employees think they will not experience a disaster. Businesses also normally take steps to protect and secure their application data, while few have prepared the organization to resume critical business processes within a desired timeframe.  Some key people are surprised to find out that although they have backed up their application data, they still cannot resume business – they are still down and losing revenue.

Businesses cannot afford to lose application data and they cannot afford to have their network infrastructure down. It just costs too much to be down; to be unproductive.  

Think about:

How long you can survive if you do not have access to your primary applications and data; the internet; key client files; your email?

 

What is the impact on your bottom line if your office workers are not able to work; no orders are able to be received or processed?

“Whose in Charge”

During a regular staff meeting, spend time discussing possible disasters and determine who should be responsible for what tasks during the disaster.  Also, assign a backup person for each task.

"You can't communicate, you can't recover"

Collect and maintain up-to-date contact information for your employees, vendors/suppliers and critical numbers such as  Insurance contacts. Depending on your business, you might want to have contact information for your clients/customers.  It is better for key clients/customer to hear there is a problem from you rather than from the news media.

Develop communication instructions and communications infrastructure.  Develop a process for contacting your employees when an emergency occurs.  Ensure your process is flexible and provides for more than one method of contact.

“Plan for no facility."

Plan for your local infrastructure to not be available.  Determine before a disaster occurs a possible facility where the business can operate out of.

Determine what network and operational documentation is needed immediately for your business to operate. Try to keep the documentation as current as possible. This includes technology equipment lists, existing network diagrams and application manuals. Also prioritize and publish a recovery sequence to minimize the outage affects.

"What, no backup of data!"

It is one thing not to have a disaster recovery or business continuity plan, but at a minimum pertinent data should be backed up and maintained off-site along with the restore procedures.  For more on backup, you might want to check out 5 Steps for Designing a Backup Process.

"I don't need to worry, I've outsourced my business application, website, etc. ”

If you have outsourced your data (a web application, customer relationship management system, etc.) consider a hosted service provider in another geographical region.

If the outsourced application is critical to your existence, understand the DRP and BCP of the vendor(s).  If the vendor goes down due to a disaster, you might be down as well. Know their Service Level commitments to you if they incur a disaster. Also, ask to see their plan knowing they will not provide the entire plan to you. It is possible they will show a sanitized plan, a recap document or just some key information such as a generic description of the plan, plan creation date, last updated, last tested, etc.  

“Expect the Unexpected”  

Plan to not stick to your emergency plan.

No solution can provide 100% protection. Disasters as well as people are unpredictable.  Be prepared for nothing to go according to plan and plan for  change.   Ad hoc decisions will need to be made.

During and after a disaster, people do not have time to think — they need to act. Pertinent information needs to be readily available and stored offsite. Even if you have a softcopy, a printed copy of documentation is recommended. A computer may not be available to read the softcopy of the documentation.