Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity ? Few Are Prepared In ...

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It is disheartening to note that in spite of the number of natural disasters that have been reported recently, many businesses do NOT have any plans in place for disaster recovery and business continuity. According to the National Center For Disaster Preparedness, slightly more than one out of every two families does NOT have any plan in places. Travelers (A property casualty insurer) discovered that as many as 48 out of every 100 businesses don?t have any plans in place.

According to, VP Travelers Risk Control, Marty Henry, those numbers show that many families and businesses have NOT taken any meaningful steps in the area of disaster recovery despite the carnage tornadoes, thunderstorms and wild fires have left along the coastal states in the recent past. It is very important to ensure that every home and business is ready in the event of such occurrences.

This becomes a very serious point for consideration as the month of September has been earmarked as the National Preparedness Month. But is this the way to carry on life or business? Travelers gives advice on things to do (with additional recommendations by the writer)?

1. It is important to have a survival plan. For families it is important to have a survival kit that will contain essentials that will keep them going for up to a week or so. Businesses need to ensure they have copies of critical documents. They also need to ensure that they have their clients? contact lists.

However, those are definitely very empirical solutions. For any serious business, disaster recovery goes far beyond picking a number of documents. It involves taking steps to ensure that the critical infrastructure necessary for the smooth running of the business continues with minimal interruption in the face of either natural disasters or those caused by human intervention.

With cloud solutions, NO serious business can excuse itself or blame total disruption of their operations on disasters ? However serious they are.

2. Have A Good Evacuation Plan. Families need to think ahead of where they?ll likely go to and how long they can stay there. Being prepared beforehand is key here. For businesses, it is important that business continuity plans include how operations will be handled in the face of different levels of disasters.

Things like how essential processes will keep running even in major disasters are essential. This is especially true for businesses that do NOT save just a local clientele. While every citizen of the world would sympathize with any country or state experiencing major disasters, they can?t allow their businesses to be held hostage because their business can?t meet your obligations. This might cost a business very important clients.

3. Have A Good Inventory. Families should have at least a copy of their home?s inventory in a different place. It?s as easy as creating a digital copy and saving it as an attachment in your free web mail account.

Very small businesses can also adopt the same approach. However, any business with a sizable number of employees will be shooting itself in the foot if it doesn?t take advantage of the different backup, disaster recovery and business continuity solutions available in the clouds.

Source: http://www.managed.com/disaster-recovery-business-continuity-prepared-spite-disasters/

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