Owners of small businesses should not only consider worst case scenarios, but actively create a plan to combat them. For example, what would happen to your business if you had a sudden stock problem and couldn’t fulfil orders? Or your premises were affected by fire or flood?
While many businesses automatically plan for fires or stock shortages, how many create a plan for a sudden failure of IT systems? This is often an unacknowledged disaster waiting to happen, and is just as important as the above examples in terms of affecting your business.
What is a disaster recovery plan?
This clearly communicated plan should consist of documented steps to recover your IT infrastructure should there be a disaster. Not having a plan in place could put your business at risk.
If a situation occurs where your network is compromised, or data is stolen, a disaster recovery plan acts as insurance for the business. It will help to keep costs down when recovering data or the network and should consider every eventuality.
When compiling the plan, think about how your business operates. For example, how and when do your customers expect to do business with you, and how could this be affected by major IT problems? When the basics have been covered, consider the fundamental technologies that allow the business to work, including intranet, data storage, email and the phone system.
Suppliers should also come under the plan, with a list of people who can help restore telephone lines, retrieve data and help get your business back on its feet.
Create a comprehensive plan
It’s a good idea to include multiple steps towards recovery. For example, if the business email system fails, you could implement a short-term plan to use personal email addresses. Backing this up should be a longer-term plan should the problem persist past a couple of days.
Make sure employees understand processes for retrieval of emails if possible. Remember that customers will expect your business to be available 24 hours a day as normal, regardless of any technical problems
Don’t forget hardware failure
While much thought is put into restoring data and applications, hardware failure can be forgotten. This covers everything from laptops to PCs, servers, routers and network switches.
Should any of these fail it will have a huge impact on your processes, ability to do business and potentially leave you open to viral attacks. As well as ensuring everything is backed up routinely, having spares of certain hardware items, such as a preconfigured router, is advisable. It will mean you can get back up and running with minimal time loss.
Disaster recovery checklist
Create a checklist for disaster recovery that takes in the specific and individual needs of your business. Include the following, but don’t treat this as exhaustive. Not only can these help your business recover from an IT disaster, it could possibly help to prevent it happening in the first place.
- Install reputable antivirus software to help prevent data loss or breaches of the network.
- Bolster security with web protection.
- Include back up lines for the internet.
- Always back up everything every day, ideally to the cloud or a server based somewhere else.
- Use a dependable email provider.
- Ensure email is archived so that you have all emails if you need to restore them.
- Buy a warranty or protection policy for hardware so you are covered.
- Have spare hardware available in case of a disaster. Include routers and PCs.
- Engage an IT supplier who can help out with every day problems.
