How To Manage Your Data Before Emergency Strikes

In 2018, the Camp fire tore through Paradise California, destroying homes and businesses and altering lives forever. The total estimated economic impact to the town and the surrounding communities has been estimated at $19 billion dollars. The far reaching effects of the Campfire illustrates why is so important to protect your business. While you can do little to stop a disaster like a raging wildfire from happening, your planning for and response to a disaster can be the difference between life and death of your business.

Buildings, vehicles, products, desks, table lamps, carpet, forklifts, time clocks, any physical thing destroyed by fire or disaster can be replaced. What cannot be replaced, is your business data. Modern businesses are based on their data and when they completely lose their data, they often do not recover.

Thankfully there are companies like ITque that can work with you to develop a backup and disaster recovery contingency plan. If you can’t see the disaster coming, you can at least plan for it.

Create a plan – A written plan that covers a great number of possible scenarios gives you a playbook for when any number of disasters strike, regardless of severity. This plan will give a timeline and checklist for what needs to be done and by whom before the disaster strikes. This step is not easy and it will require you to make some difficult decisions, but they are decisions that are better made far ahead of time, rather than in the moment, under duress. Another benefit of having a plan is it forces you to see the flaws in your disaster recovery contingencies already in place.

Fill the gaps – If you have been operating without a plan for this long, chances are the planning phase has exposed a number of shortcomings. You may not have had adequate data redundancy in case a server goes down. You might not have any off-site storage in case your building is damaged or destroyed. The important people responsible for protecting critical hardware and data may not be clear. This is the time to take stock of where you fall short and make sure they are not a problem going forward.

Document your network – If your infrastructure is on-site, you will need to know it inside and out. Create network maps so you can use the hardware to re-create the network in another location if needed. A full network map and inventory is important for insurance purposes in case the equipment needs to be replaced after the disaster.

Test your plan – This is perhaps the most critical step. You won’t fully know if your plan works if it isn’t tested. While you can’t simulate a hurricane or earthquake, you can test under simulated conditions. This gives your employees an idea of what they need to do during a disaster and when. Testing can expose flaws and areas where confusion can derail the plan completely. Test, adjust, and test again.

ITQUE CAN MAKE YOUR DISASTER RECOVERY PLANS A REALITY

You don’t have to plan this on your own, or rely on your already overworked IT staff to perform a miracle and create a plan on their own. Our technicians can take a look at your business, your equipment, your current disaster recovery plans, and suggest a data security and business continuity plan that is real and makes sense for everyone involved.

Protecting your data is one of the most important things you can do to protect your business and when disaster strikes, you need to know what to do. Call ITque today and we can get started making your business disaster-proof.