Disaster Recovery Plans
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Most business owners don't feel that a disaster will happen to their business..... But they still pay for business insurance every year. One of the top 3 priorities of global corporations is business continuous planning in lieu of a disaster. The top two scenarios they are preparing for are power outages and a temporary shut down (clogging) of the Internet due to a cyber attack.
We suggest that you discuss with your staff how they would do business if one of the 2 scenarios occurred.
Here are some things to consider when discussing a disaster situation with your staff and putting together your plan.
Communication with customers, vendors, providers & associates
This is by far the most important area that needs to be addressed. Being able to communicate is critical for a business in the 21st century. Understanding the impact and knowing the alternate options "AHEAD OF TIME" is priceless. Trying to answer questions about your communication problems during the chaotic time of a system shut down is a disaster in itself. Think about:
- Who will do what when you need to activate your plan? (i.e. roll over phone lines, restore your database for temporary use, notify associates, etc.)
- How will you send and receive calls & emails?
- How will you process orders, receive shipments & take care of customer requests?
Once you have discovered the impact issues, the next step is to get a first hand understanding of how you will implement temporary working conditions in your plan. For example: If your plan is to have your main phone number forwarded to a cell number, you may find out that it can take up to 36 hours to have the function implemented. Depending on a number of variables, it may be beneficial to order & have that forwarding feature in place so you can just turn it on and off when "YOU" need it.
Write down your plan
The best & easiest way to accomplish this is to have your staff write out a draft for their individual tasks or departments. During your "mock" scenario you will discover what will or won't work and which tasks depend on other people within the organization. Once their task lists go through a litmus test, scan and correlate them into a folder that you can save on your system and share with the staff.
Also keep a hard copy of this plan either offsite or in your IT Library in case the system goes down and you are unable to retrieve the original document. Make sure you keep a list of your critical contacts & a backup of your database and all critical data offsite with your plan.
The intent of this article is to raise your level of awareness so you can avoid a potentially disastrous impacting situation to your business. We guarantee that by taking a little time now to address this issue, the ROI could be tremendous for such a small investment.
Tina Hamrick
SJK Beringer Group
