Splashwire Inc. — Information Technology Support & Solutions

Is Your Business Prepared for a Disaster?

Is Your Business Prepared for a Disaster?

Take a moment to scan around the office. Computers, phones, wireless devices as far as the eye can see, right? All storing and carrying data that your organization and employees depend on every minute of the workday — and likely after business hours, too. But what happens if that technology fails due to a natural or human-caused disaster?

Business and technology are more integrated than ever before, making it even more critical to have an disaster recovery plan in place. Studies show 43% of companies that experience a major loss of business data never reopen and 29% close within two years.

There are definitive preventive steps you can take to ensure that your business is in a position to quickly recover from the technology impacts of a disaster.

Plan Before You Need It

The time to put a recovery plan in place isn’t during a disaster, it’s well before.

A disaster recovery plan should be created in conjunction with your business continuity plan. Devising a viable strategy takes considerable effort and advance planning. It involves bringing a team of key stakeholders in your organization together to work through possible disaster scenarios and identify solutions. Keep in mind the disasters can be natural (such as a flooded data center) or human-induced (like a cyber attack or IT bugs).

Disaster Recovery Infographic

Ask Questions

“What’s the backup to the backup?” It’s the winning question when creating a disaster recovery strategy. Your business’s initial backup plan may work for a period of time, but it may not be a long-term solution that can keep your business running until things are completely back to normal.

How long will your backup generators run? Can they handle keeping your air conditioning units working in your data center? What do you do if the backup generator goes down? Working through these lines of questioning can help your business identify areas to address and plan redundancies to keep your doors open.

Preventative Maintenance

A disaster recovery plan isn’t a “set it and forget it” endeavor. It requires routine preventative maintenance. This includes regular system updates, system testing and assessments to ensure the plan keeps up with changes in your technology environment.

Staff Training

A recovery plan is of no use if employees don’t know their role during an emergency.

Annual disaster recovery and business continuity training is critical to make sure employees are ready to jump into action. Identify and train team leads who will relay information to their employees in the event of a disaster. Training for new employees should be incorporated into their orientation program.

Additionally, tabletop exercises provide an opportunity to test disaster recovery and business continuity plans without a full scale drill. This involves engaging your organization in a mock disaster, gathering subject matter experts (SMEs) to talk through the scenario and documenting how your business would react. These exercises are an important tool to uncover interdependencies and gaps, and identify areas of concern and ways to address them.

Splashwire Disaster Recovery Services

Splashwire, a technology consulting and solutions company, can help your business establish a scalable disaster recovery solution, backed by 24/7/365 local support.

Our solutions include back-up and protection for operating systems, applications, configurations and data for physical and virtual environments.

Contact us to us to learn more.