Perspectives & Strategy

There are many challenges to building a Disaster Recovery programme for large corporations. In looking at small or medium sized corporations the budget challenges are certainly more acute, yet there is a clear need for the risk to be mitigated.

There are two main things that need to be covered when defining a recovery plan:

• Protect documents and data,
• Create a check-list of “what-ifs” and write out what your businesses’ response would be,

Documents and data are critical to the success of the business. It is often said that people are the most valuable asset to a business, but its data comes in a very close second. A single premises business has a potential for further risk as all the non-human assets are stored in a single location. Think of the risk of a fire. Computers (or Servers) must be regularly backed-up with the copies being retained off-site.
It is important to know what your insurance policy covers, but it is also important that key documents are kept off-site. Many insurance policies only cover the essentials e.g. the stock in a store fire, but it is essential to have all IT equipment included. For the small business it can be the red-tape around a policy that can ensure a smaller business does not re-open. Off-site back-ups of computer files and important documents at least ensures that aspect of the business can re-start.