Let’s talk about the weather for a moment, shall we? As Hurricane Hector headed towards Hawaii as a Category 4 storm in the Pacific, experts forecast a less active than average Atlantic hurricane season. This is good news in general, but it doesn’t mean that your organization can rest on its laurels when it comes to preparing for hurricane season, and the potential for natural disasters in general. In fact, laying the groundwork for a strong disaster recovery plan now could literally save your business in the future. According to FEMA, 40% of small businesses won’t ever reopen after suffering through a natural disaster, 25% will close within a year, and a whopping 75% of businesses without a continuity plan in place will have failed within three years of the initial disaster.
The Atlantic hurricane season lasts from June 1 to November 30, and although we’re already through a good chunk of it, it’s never too late to review and revise your current processes and procedures.
Availability and Flexibility
One of the very first things to consider when working on your disaster preparedness plan is what happens when your business is physically inaccessible. In all likelihood (and with our sincerest hope!), you will never need to worry about your building flooding or burning down. But you will probably need to worry, at least once or twice a year, about dealing with hazardous weather conditions that make it difficult for your employees to actually get to work. In the past, it was necessary for businesses to simply shut down and take the hit, but with all of the technology available today it’s possible for many types of businesses to have their employees work from home without there being any concerns for downtime or interruptions to client satisfaction.
As part of your disaster preparedness plan (and perhaps just as a normal course of business) you would ensure that all of your data is available to your employees from home or a satellite location. This means that data should be backed up on a regular basis and have the capability for real-time replication. If you anticipate employees working from secondary locations on a regular basis, it may be worthwhile to install a VPN so that they can login from anywhere to get their work done without an interruption in service.
Backups and Storage
There’s nothing new here folks - proper backups and storage of your data are extremely important, and even more so if you live in an area that tends to take the brunt of Mother Nature’s wrath in the form of hurricanes, tornados, forest fires, or blizzards. If your company’s systems aren’t set for regular backup - and those backups aren’t being stored securely off-site - you could be in for a world of hurt. Depending on the severity of the damage, it may not be feasible to get your entire system up and running all at once, so it’s important to take stock of which departments and areas of business need access first in order to keep things running smoothly - or prevent the business from losing too much revenue - and prioritize from there. You’ll also need to take into consideration the point from which you need the data restored - if it’s critical to your business that you don’t lose more than six hours of data, for instance, then your backups will need to be scheduled as such.
Curious to see whether or not your business continuity plan makes the grade? Take our business continuity quiz to find out.