The term “Disaster Recovery” as it relates to a company’s computer operations generally refers to that firm’s ability to recover from either a natural or man made disaster that adversely affects business operations. These disasters include floods, fires, natural causes such as weather events or virtually anything that causes a company’s physical location to be impaired in a serious manner.
For both large and small companies a degree of planning goes into the preparation of a proper disaster recovery plan.
Large companies often spend many thousands of dollars on the planning, testing, products, preparation and on going support of an enterprise level disaster recovery plan.
Smaller companies don’t generally have near the budget nor expertise to implement as robust a disaster recovery plan as a larger company but still need to do some preparation to recover from an emergency. It is this advance planning that generally leads to minimal loss of operational capability and important data should a catastrophic event occur.
IT support companies can prove helpful in this planning cycle by recommending products, policies and procedures that should be followed on a day to day basis insuring that data and communications are secure. The goal is the company’s ability to rapidly recover regardless of the condition of the company’s physical site. IT Service firms may have expertise in both on-site and cloud storage solutions, engineering help to bring back these back-ups, possibly carry spare hardware for emergency use and have a rapid response time for emergency situations.
It is important for a small businessman to think the unthinkable when it comes to his business operations and envision the worst has happened and what plans, products, and procedures has he put in place to bring his business back to normal in a reasonable time frame.
With some basic planning and a small budget to implement a disaster recovery plan the negative impact of a man made or natural disaster to the operations of a business can be held to a minimum.
We will explore some specific disaster recovery scenarios in the next few weeks. Stay tuned……….
