You never know when disaster will strike and that is why any business of any size should have a good, solid Disaster Recovery Plan. You don’t have to be a Fortune 1000 company with an entire IT staff and you don’t have to be the most tech-saavy person or spend a lot of money. Below you will find a list of suggestions that will help anyone get started on creating an efficient and effective Disaster Recovery Plan:
Your Data:
1. Understand what your company’s critical data is including accounting, inventory software, email, critical Word or Excel documents, etc.
2. Know where that data is stored and know what needs to be backed up for storage.
3. Know how often the data changes or is updated.
4. Understand the size of the data, so that you are not overly paying for services or wasting time and money on a product or service that is too small to back you up.
Your Plan:
1. Alternative locations such as temporary offices or warehouse space to house your employees, inventories, and computer systems should be found in advance.
2. Make vendor contact information easy to access and keep it handy in a secure off-set location.
3. Think of how you will communicate with your customers, both public and private and make sure you have some sort of database of their contact information ready and available.
4. Keep your employee contact plan and information off-site, as well. Make sure your employees know what to expect.
5. Make sure you have contacted a reliable Computer Rental Firm to know what is available to help you resume normal operations.
6. Keep an off-site collection of a set of usernames, passwords, software key-codes, and access information.
7. Make sure you have copies of software that may not be easily replaced and is specific to your business.
8. Consult with a computer service organization to implement data back-up and a plan for software-installation, data-reinstallation, and other disaster recovery service.
Your Survival:
1. Do not panic. Understand that disasters happen and whether or not you survive will depend on your Disaster Recovery Plan.
2. Remember, data is very important and can make or break you during times of disaster.
3. Never think that a good Disaster Recovery Plan has to be expensive or complex.
4. Act now because disaster can strike at any time.
