Is Your Business Prepared for a Disaster?

Business disasters come in different shapes and sizes, which makes it all the more critical that you take the time to prepare for any that your organization may be vulnerable to. This strategy needs to contain numerous considerations, based on the scenario at hand; there is no shortage of events that can lead to disaster in the business world.

Defining Disasters

Any business, particularly those that rely on their technology solutions, are vulnerable to a variety of disasters. These disasters can be split into three categories: natural disasters, technological disasters, and human disasters.

Natural Disasters - With effectively every environment on the planet having one form of extreme weather or another, these events are always a risk for a company. Whether a business needs to contend with flooding, severe storms, earthquakes, or any other extreme environmental event, these types of disasters can have very real business ramifications if not mitigated.

Technological Disasters - While there are some ways to limit the risk of a technological disaster striking your business, like maintaining your hardware to ensure it doesn’t fail or keeping your critical applications up to date, others are unfortunately out of your control. For example, if your power goes out, it’s unlikely that operations can continue, and any unsaved data from before your systems died will be lost. What if your suppliers make a mistake, and leave you without a critical component to your processes? These kinds of events can suspend operations.

Human Disaster - Alas, one of the vital components of your business is also the thing that can cause the widest variety of issues in your operations. From workplace accidents to human error to issues with former employees, your business is arguably most susceptible from the inside. Naturally, there are some disasters that can arise from typical events going awry… What happens when one of your key employees needs to go on an extended leave of absence?

Which Risks Concern You?

Each of these can have serious consequences to your organization, its processes, and ultimately, its success. Nonetheless, your level of risk for each will vary. This means that the first consideration you make is which events will have the greatest impact on your operations. Once you’ve established this, you are ready to tackle the rest of your plan with your priorities more effectively planned out.

What Your Strategy Should Cover

As you prepare your organization for a potential disaster in the future, you need to focus your efforts toward accomplishing three benchmark goals:

• Protecting your employees and infrastructure
• Preserving your data and proprietary information
• Permitting operations to be resumed quickly (if not maintaining business continuity through the disaster)

With these goals in mind, you need to take everything in your organization into account before you run into a problem, putting measures into effect proactively. This means your backup plan needs to address how your data backups are to be managed and maintained, that your backup will remain operational throughout the disaster, and any processes that your business will need to replace resources after the disaster has ended.

Preparing the Business as a Whole

You should also be sure to keep the entire team in the loop as far as backup procedures are concerned, as well as what to do in case of disaster. Not only is there a chance that one of them may have to enact it, new employees are going to need someone to introduce them to your business’ processes.

Moreover, as your business continues to develop over time, you should regularly return to your backups and reevaluate the data you’re protecting, and how it ties into your greater business continuity and disaster recovery.

You Need to Prioritize Your Backup Plan

There’s no getting around the fact that the initial process can eat up a considerable amount of time... but, since it is also imperative, it is not something you can neglect.

At Macro Systems, we have considerable experience with data backups, and can leverage that experience to assist you with yours. Give us a call at 703-359-9211 to learn more about preparing your organization for a worst-case scenario.