Prepare Your Business for the Relevant Disasters, Not the Absurd Ones

How prepared is your business for a disaster, and are you prepared for the right disaster? When it comes to making your organization's business continuity plan, the scenarios you plan for need to be realistic. Otherwise, all the hard work of planning will be for nothing.

There are some disasters that every business is at risk of, like a fire or a hacking attack. Therefore, it's always a good idea to brace yourselves for these common disasters by taking advantage of solutions, like firewalls (both of the physical and digital variety). Then there are other disasters specific to your region, like floods, blizzards, earthquakes, theft, user error, or lightning.

Your business continuity plan must be relevant to the potential disasters looming over your office, especially when it comes to backing up and recovering your company's data. ComputerWorld tells an IT technician's story that was tasked with preparing their company's data recovery plan for an unlikely scenario, while ignoring a disaster that was more likely to strike.

The data center I supported was in the top floor of a multistory building near the airport. I was put on a team tasked with ensuring everything was ready to switch to a disaster recovery hot site located in another state.

The director of the site was paranoid that the server room would flood. Flood detectors and an automatic paging system were installed. The entire plan was built around detecting this event and then following a carefully scripted action list for shutdown and migration of operations to the DR site.

Because water is the big concern, there are no water pipes in the server room. Then he checked the roof for water tanks or other sources of water. While he's up there, he watches planes landing at the airport -- and one flies directly overhead at an altitude of only a few hundred feet. It seems that the building is directly in the landing pattern for one of the runways.

I tell the site director that an aircraft hit is more likely than a flood. Site director insists that a hurricane was more likely to flood the server room. I counter that the building is several hundred miles from the coast, so a hurricane isn't likely. And so for the next few months, the team continues planning for the flood.

Can you relate to this story? It's frustrating to prepare for an unlikely scenario, especially when it means ignoring more likely disaster scenarios like a tornado or an earthquake. How then do you know for sure if you're adequately prepared for every possible disaster?

This kind of preparedness requires special knowledge about the disasters that have hit our area. Be sure to think long and hard about what risks accompany your region. It's also good to do research. Looking into past regional and local disasters should be a mandatory task for a new manager overseeing their company's business continuity plan.

Macro Systems can assist your business with assessing its chances of a disaster. We work with a variety of businesses in unique locations and we know what to look for, especially when it comes to risks posed to your organization's data. One of the best precautions your company can take to protect your company's data is to implement our Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) solution.

Our BDR solution is specially designed to withstand any disaster. A BDR isn't water, fire, or shock proof, but instead, it keeps your company's data safe by backing up your files off site. This way, if your business is hit with a worst-case-office-building-explosion-scenario, then you would still be able to access your data and get operations up and running again as soon as you can get a hold of an Internet-connected terminal.

Prepare your organization for the worst and the relevant by calling Macro Systems at (703) 359-9211.