Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
Most small and medium sized businesses do not have suitable plans to manage the
impact of serious IT problems.
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning bridges the gap between knowing
that you are vulnerable to things going wrong and having a clear set of tested policies
and procedures to ensure you can do something about it if the worst happens.
Planning is not just about having a phone number to call when things go wrong, it
is about understanding the impact that not being able to use computers would have
on your business and then working to ensure that impact is minimised.
Business Continuity Planning may be a simple as printing your current price list
out every day to ensure you have a copy if your PC doesn’t work, it may be a complex
as having a duplicate of your entire IT system in a different building ready to
be used within an hour.
If you answer No to any of the following questions then your business could benefit
from a proper Business Continuity Plan:
- Do you do daily backups of data and critical system?
- Do you know that yesterday’s backup was successful?
- Do you know how long it would take to recover your server if it was stolen or irreparably
broken?
- Have you set a maximum length of time that you would be happy for employees who
rely on computers to sit idle?
- Do you know what would happen to your business if your computer systems were unavailable
for a week?
- Do you have a plan to deal with the aftermath of a fire at your offices?
- How long could you afford to be without an internet connection before profits would
be affected