Today’s businesses are surrounded by digital information. Between customer data and accounting data it is a wonder how businesses got along without computers years ago. They have certainly made the day to day operations simpler for many people. I must also admit they have caused much frustration too. But all in all, they have really become a necessity in the modern business. It is to this requirement that I ask many business owners about their company’s data. Is your data backed up? Can you recover your data? Do you test your backups regularly? I sometimes get an annoyed answer back of “Yes!” I then usually ask the follow up question, “Are you sure?” At this point, I typically get a dumbfounded look. Some answer, “Of course, I am!” and others finally answer, “I don’t know.”

Each and every business owner needs be able to answer yes to every one of these questions. Can you? If at this point, you’re asking what a backup is, then you may not even have a computer. But for the millions of other businesses out there, what is your answer? I talk to so many people week after week asking if they have a Disaster Recovery plan for their company’s data. They all usually tell me the same thing. “Yes, we backup every night!” or “We use remote backup.” When they give me this answer, I just shake my head and try and educate them on the question. See, I did not ask them if they backed up their data. I asked them if they have a disaster recovery plan for their network. Backing up data is not a disaster recovery plan. It is only one part of an entire solution. A disaster recovery plan for your data is like an insurance policy for your data. You have a policy to replace all of the equipment and materials in your business but nothing to replace the intellectual property and contact and hundreds of other Gigabytes of data you have stored on your desktop, laptops and servers. I really want to share this with the reader so that I might attempt to educate just one or two business owners that Backup is not Disaster Recovery. Disaster recovery is the ability to recover from a disaster. What does that really mean? It could mean a lot of different things to a lot of different companies. Here are just a few for you to ask yourself: How long will it take me to return to 100% production? How long will it take to restore my data? How long will it take for my phone to start ringing again? These are just a few of the questions you need to ask about what a disaster can do to your company. Have you thought about this in your business? If not, then get started right away! As an IT consultant, I think of the many bumps in my clients businesses. My goal is to prepare them for the worst case. I want to know that if my client drove up to work and all they saw was a smoking pile of dust we can still recover their business. After all the tears have passed and phone calls made, we need to get the client back in the driver’s seat. How do you get in the driver’s seat? That is what a disaster recovery plan is for.

Most disasters are not from Hurricanes or Earthquakes, but simple human error. The employee that left the door unlocked to a would be thief, the business above you that had a busted water pipe and drowned your servers or even the lighting strike that came through the phone lines that turned your server into a huge door stop. All of these things happen to businesses daily. It is just a matter of time when one of them will happen to you. So I ask again, do you have a disaster recovery plan? It does not have to be complicated. Ask yourself these questions… 

1. How often will I test & update my network disaster recovery plan?

2. Who will I call when my network disaster hits?

3. How will I recover my data?

4. How long should I expect to be down?

5. Will I be able to help my existing clients/customers during the recovery?

6. How much will it cost me to recover?

7. Who is responsible for my data backups?

8. Are my backups being stored in a safe location?

9. What is a reasonable acceptance of lost data?

10. See Step 1!

Kotori Technologies, LLC can help you with a good solution for your company. The first step is to realize that you need one. Once you do that then put into action what the most important part of your plan is and take the first step toward your disaster recovery planning.