Disaster preparedness can be the difference between a short downtime and a business closing its doors forever. No business is immune to the threats of disaster; each one faces different challenges. For example, hurricane season is in full swing, and that means business owners along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts need to take some time to prevent a hurricane from potentially ruining their livelihoods.
We’ll show you how to keep a catastrophe from ruining your business by staying one step ahead of the problems with effective disaster preparedness.
What Is Considered a Disaster?
Before subverting disasters, we must know what comprises one. Hurricanes, flooding, massive power outages, tornadoes, and cyberattacks are just a few examples of disasters that can impact a business. These disasters can destroy the physical structure of your business as well as various parts of your operations’ infrastructure, like IT services and data.
Devise an Emergency Plan and Guidelines
Creating an emergency plan to help your business overcome the difficulties of a disaster requires a thorough evaluation of the risks facing your business. Every company is different, so you must determine which threats you need to mitigate.
Rather than focusing on total-loss scenarios, you should focus on an emergency plan that has guidelines for more common disasters. You’re more likely to encounter a data loss or a cyberattack than have your entire business wiped away by a massive storm.
Your emergency plan needs to consider what systems are at risk and then devise countermeasures. Start small and then build your way up until you have accounted for various levels of disaster.
Make sure to identify appropriate stakeholders for certain problems. Keep them trained to cover problems that are pertinent to them and make sure your workers know how to keep their heads on a swivel to identify potential opportunities during a disaster.
Use the 3-2-1 Data Backup Rule
A major issue that emerges during disasters is the loss of valuable business data. Customer information, sales records, and tax data can all be compromised by a cyberattack. Just to be clear: businesses of every size, small to large, have been victimized by cyberattacks this year. You are not immune.
The 3-2-1 data backup rule has three components that can help you recover your valuable data so you can avoid paying a ransom or losing it entirely. The basis of the plan is as follows:
- You should maintain 3 copies of your data
- Your data is kept must be kept on 2 different storage devices
- At least 1 copy of the data should be off-site
With cloud and secure storage options, you should have no problem storing your data in a secure area.
Test Your Disaster Recovery Plan
The first time you enact your disaster readiness plan, it should not be in the face of a looming disaster. You need to train your workers and engage your protocols so that they occur seamlessly. Use practice drills and conversations to get workers on the same page so that every stakeholder knows their responsibilities for disaster preparedness.
By the time you get word of an impending hurricane or hear about a ransomware situation, everyone should already know what to do.
Get Your Plan Together
Getting your emergency preparedness plan together is not something you need to do alone. When you consider 40-60 percent of small businesses never reopen after a disaster, you should welcome the opportunity to seek some professional help.
Placing safeguards for your business is as simple as reaching out to WheelHouse IT to get a personalized business risk assessment and seeing how they can help. Get professional help to keep your business thriving in the face of common and uncommon disasters. You can also perform your own risk assessment by clicking below!
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