Avoiding Data Disaster – The low cost of keeping your business

THIS article highlights some of the common and not so common dangers (i.e. risks) to your business and some actions to help you put an IT disaster recovery plan in-place.

Imagine you get a phone call saying the building or area you work had a fire virtually destroying everything beyond repair. This happened to one of Australia’s famous brands, Nudie Juice, in 2004 when they were barely 2 years old. In the case of Nudie Juice, they recovered fully within a short time. If a fire destroyed your office, would you have enough customer information and data to continue trading the next day? In the case where time is often money, you cannot afford to rebuild your data, computers and customer contacts.

Almost all businesses have a fire evacuation policy to ensure they save lives and most have some insurance, however, many do not have sufficient plans to ensure their business stays alive in terms of their computer systems or data. The ones in question include the 15,000 or so Small to Medium Businesses (SMB) businesses in Parramatta area, especially those that employ less than 50 staff and do not typically have in-house IT staff.

The disasters that make headlines like earthquakes, floods, fires and buildings falling over are reason enough to have a plan in place. Even though these scenarios are rare, these events cripple many businesses. FEMA (US Federal Emergency Agency) has stated that hurricane Andrew put more than 80% of the businesses (without continuity plans) permanently out of operation. Locally, 72% of businesses hit by severe crises fail within two years. More disturbing, almost half the businesses close their doors within a couple of weeks after a disaster. (Source: from Risk Management Institute of Australasia www.rmia.org.au)

More common forms of disaster for businesses do not make headlines, but are sometimes equally disruptive. This includes lost data due to: computer hard disk failure, accidently erasing files, dropping a computer, computer theft, power surge/outages, computer viruses and information hackers.

The easiest way to protect against disaster is to protect your data. Loss of data impacts the entire business, so a simple back-up plan where data is automatically centralized to a server and a daily routine of saving and taking data off-site is needed.

• Customer information including quotes and project work
• Inventory and supplier information
• Sales, billing and financial records
• Databases & historical records, including e-mails
• Business planning, budgeting and forecasting
• Contracts, HR and employee information