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Disasters are common in the
world today, from nature to car
wrecks. In the computer
industry, disasters aren’t any
different. They can come in the
form of an office fire, computer
crashes, hard drive failure,
missing IT documents, stolen
hardware, and many other forms.
Disasters can be very traumatic
and stressful, although there
are actions that you can take.
Even though disasters can occur
at any time, recovery planning
doesn’t cross the mind of
business owners or individuals.
Most just carry out their normal
day to day routines, never aware
of what could result from a
disaster. Then, when disaster
does strike, most tend to freak
out and wonder just what they
can do to fix the situation at
hand.
If you are prepared for a
disaster or hard drive failure,
then your business will be able
to deal with anything that
happens. The first step in
planning and preparing for
disaster is to analyze your
business or operations. You
should determine how often your
systems go down, and how you can
manage operations without the
equipment. You should also find
out how long it would take you
to fix the equipment, and what
your business can do to make
ends meet when the equipment is
unavailable.
Something else you’ll need to do
is identify the risks of
possible disaster. This can
include computer failure, loss
of power, hardware problems,
etc. You should always include
the causes as well as the
solution in your plans. If your
office suffers from disaster and
cannot be used for a period of
time, you should always have
another location that you can go
to continue your business.
In the event of disaster, you
should always have a dedicated
team that will work on fixing
any problems. This team should
be responsible for your recovery
plan and hold regular meetings
to make sure that everything is
accurate. Then, if disaster
should strike, your team should
be well enough prepared to take
care of anything that comes your
way.
On a frequent basis, you should
create backups of your IT
systems and test the backups
that you have created. Always
make sure that the backups you
made are in a safe place, and
out of the way of harm. You
should also check with your
disaster recovery team as well,
and make sure that they have the
location of your backups noted
in their recovery plans.
One of the most important
aspects of recovery and disaster
planning is to keep an up to
date inventory on all of your
equipment and material. You
should always stay on top of
this, to make sure that you can
easily identify what you have
and how to go about replacing
equipment whenever something
happens. If you keep a record of
your suppliers and their phone
numbers, you can have them with
you for easy access in the event
of an emergency.
Even though it may be easier to
document all of your recover
plans on your computer, you
should also record them on paper
as well. Disasters can render
your computers useless, which
would it very hard to access
plans that are stored on your IT
systems. If you have them noted
on paper as well, you can access
them without any problems.
Above everything else, you
should always think about the
possible disasters that can
occur at any time and how to be
prepared for them. If you think
about things and plan things out
before hand, you’ll find that
you can handle any type of
disaster. This way - a disaster
doesn’t have to stop you from
carrying out your normal day to
day operations. |
