Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines with incomprehensible devastation. And more locally, Illinois was hit hard by tornado damage. Our hearts and prayers go out to the victims of the world’s most current natural disaster.
With these incidents, we are reminded to think of our own personal lives and businesses and our own disaster planning. In this day and age, our dependance on our information technology and the infrastructure it takes to manage it has escalated. You may have never had to live through a natural disaster or it may have been years since you did. Take a moment to consider your life without your hard drive, your computer or your paper files. And at home, without your family photos, birth certificates, years of files and childrens’ artwork. Your computer and home can be replaced but the monetary value of your data and personal files is incomprehensible.
Business Knowledge Systems wants you to protect yourself and your business. Take this opportunity to make sure you have a disaster recover plan. Do you have an IT disaster recovery plan or a continuity of operations plan (COOP) in place? Consider the following and how you are protecting and backing up this data.
Client Rolodex and Contract Data. The most valuable asset a company has is their Client information, without it there is no business. Without being able to inform clients of the disaster, loss of clients can be instant. Insurance may cover the costs, but it does nothing for keeping clients.
Accounting System Data. Billing is nearly always on the work computers. If it is all lost, cash flow stops and past billing cannot be followed up to bring billing up to date.
Inventory Replacement Data. With no computers, some businesses have no record of their inventory, assets or values to place on each business asset. This should be easily accessible in case of disaster, so the insurance claim can be placed as soon as possible.
Other important data may include employee records, sales tax records and paper trails for staffing, client projects or more.
BKS provides IT services and IT consulting to small and medium sized Chicago area businesses and specializes in helping create IT disaster recovery plans.
Secure Off-Site Storage.
It is imperative that you and your business have a secure off-site storage for your data. A recovery plan must include secure off-site storage of all of data and information well away from home or office and with a regular schedule for backup service. BKS can work with your company to come up with the service that best fits your situation.
Basic Disaster Plan.
Like a new version of the phone trees from your childhood, your business needs to have a plan to get the information out. The plan needs to include how to: 1) redirect telephones 2) contact staff including who could to work from home 3)contact clients - prioritized. If your business is larger, you also might have a plan setup for detailed immediate management responsibilities, so there is no overlap and wasted times.
Unfortunately, most small business people do not think of all of this until it is too late. BKS would like to take this unfortunate opportunity to remind you to a make a plan, update or revise your plan or simply review your existing plan.
Some of this can be taken on in-house, but if you need additional assistance or you don’t have time to focus on this, BKS would be pleased to provide managed IT services and disaster recovery planning for you.
