Basic Disaster Prevention for Small Business Data

Disasters happen.

It is not a matter of IF, but WHEN. You cannot wait until after to prepare. It could cost you your business !

They can take the form of a natural disaster, a man made disaster such as fires and even unexpected damages caused by equipment failure such as the crash of a hard disk drive.

No one can predict or prevent all forms of potential disaster as they relate to the survival of your business. Some may be unsurmountable such as the complete distruction of your buildings by flood, earthquake, storm or other natural disaster. The cost to start over in the current economic climate my simple be out of reach.

Lesser disasters can still doom your business to fail if preventitive disaster measures are not taken in advance. This is a case where the old addage about a "penny's prevention being worth a pound of cure" is so true.

Today's businesses are tied to data and most of that data resides on a computer hard drive. The age of computers has permitted us to use our data in creative ways and to handle many tedious tasks with relative ease including tax preparaton, document storage and retreival and other chores common to today's enterprises. The down side is that the loss of that data can spell doom to your business. What happens when you lose your entire client database? or all of your accounts receivables? or your vast inventory records? the list of your suppliers and their contacts? Even if you have paper files you could use to recover your data from, how many many hours will it take to reconstruct all of that data on a new computer? At what cost? Will insurance pay?

What if the same disaster that takes your hard drive also takes your paper backups such as a fire or theft? What will you do then?

Have you even thought about it? You need to and now is the best time.

Some basic steps you MUST take as soon as possible.

• Make sure to protect every computer and external drive with a good quality battery back up (UPS)
• Install an inexpensive external USB or Network Storage drive and automatic backup software on all of your critical computers. Buy two of these drives and once a week swap the one at the office with a second drive you keep at home or even in a safety deposit box.
• Make backup copies of all of your important programs and keep the backups at a different physical location such as at home or better yet, in a safety deposit box at your bank.
• Make separate backup copies of critical data to a DVD and keep a copy at home or deposit box. Prior year tax records, client lists, suppliers etc. Date the disks because you know that they won't be current at the time of a disaster but can bring you to at least the date they are made.
• Install and use a disk image program that makes an exact clone of your hard drive including all programs and operating system. Save this on an external backup drive or off-site backup. By restoring from an image you will have an identical environment as before with all your familiar programs and data ready to go.
• Computers are cheap. By one to duplicate your main computer. Put all programs and data on the "spare" computer and keep it handy and up to date. For short term problems such as a virus or malware that makes your regular computer unoperable you have a means to continue to operate while your first system is restored. This is where the clone image comes in handy as well.
• Purchase a cost effective off site backup service like Mozy or Data Deposit Box. I can't stress this enough because some natural disasters can hit more than just your place of business. Off site provides a secure storage place, often in a distant city and state unaffected by your disaster. These are automatic if you keep your software running and always current as of the time of your greatest need.
• Ask your insurance company if they cover data loss or if they do, is there a discount if you are taking pro-active measures to protect your data.
• Once you are confident your data, as well as your customer's data, are safe...let your customer's share the comfort. You may find they have more confidence in you if you are taking steps to protect them as well.
• Hardware Solutions:

   

• Hard drive - 250 GB - External Hi-Speed USB Backup Drive
• APC Back-UPS ES 8 Outlet 550VA
  Single computer with a backup USB drive
• APC Back-UPS - 865 Watt - 1500 VA
  Two computers easy!
• Tripp Lite Protect It! Surge Protector
• Western Digital 1 TB Network Attached Storage>

Tips on Battery Backup:

Due the high current demands do not plug your Laser printer into your UPS. Instead make sure you have a suitable Surge Protector to supply power to your printer. We also like to plug our UPSs into a surge protector as well. Many come with a warantee to protect connected devices. By having two layers of protection against voltage surges you also have two warantees to call upon in the event a lightning strike takes out equipment. Also consider adding a battery backup to other devices you rely on such as your cordless phones, credit card terminals and cash registers. Not only do you add protection from damage, your business won't suddenly go dark when the lights go out. Don't forget to plug in a desk lamp to the UPS so you can still see!

• We Use Mozy to backup our office computers.

Suggested Reading: IT Disaster Recovery Planning For Dummies Data Protection: Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance Backup & Recovery: Inexpensive Backup Solutions for Open Systems Pro Data Backup and Recovery Simple Computer Transfer and Backup: Don't Lose your Music and Photos Implementing Backup and Recovery: The Readiness Guide for the Enterprise

Summary:

For many businesses and households data is their life blood. This not only includes the data you need to operate your business on a daily basis but treasured digital photos of your family and friends. The cost to protect this valuable resource is small, the cost to replace, if even possible, is great. Don't wait until it is all gone to express remorse that you did not take steps in time to save it all...take steps now to assure that you know it will never be lost.