Now your website has gone live, what next, plan for the worse!

Every business can experience a serious incident that can prevent it from continuing the normal business activity. The level of disruption can range from flood or fire to a serious computer malfunction or Information Security incident. The management has a responsibility to recover from such incidents in the minimum amount of time, with minimum disruption and at minimum cost. This requires careful preparation and planning. By outlining the most common steps in disaster recovery contingency planning, as well as identifying popular tools and solutions, itsAMP will help make this process far less daunting.

It is vital business take the development and maintenance of the disaster recovery extremely seriously. From our experience interest in the plan often follows a major incident and is too late the damage is done. The plan needs to be developed by a team representing all functional areas of the business. Importantly everybody has to understand the role they will play in recovery. The first starting point for any business is already under way; you already have made the decision to read about disaster recovery. So what are the next steps?

The best way forward is to start to role play some scenarios that may happen to your business. Make these as realistic as possible and do not cheat your way out, you are only masking a real hidden risk.

1Where do you start now, you need to contact you client to advise of the disruption – Do you have their number?

2You need to check your diary for appointments directions – Do you have access?

3You need to report the theft of the laptop – Do you know what data is on the computer and how sensitive is the data?

These are just a few questions that need answers in the direct aftermath but did you know by careful planning a lot of problems could be mitigated by considering solutions up front.

1

Your contacts could be synchronised with a phone, or even simpler write down important contact details for your visit just in case!

2Your calendar could be synchronised with a phone, or even simpler write down important contact details for your visit just in case!

3The third question may basically hold you responsible for the loss of Data under the Data Protection Laws. You may have now lost a laptop with your customers’ payment details which may include bank details.

So as you can see Disaster Recovery will severely hurt your business if you have not planned. Whilst we can not prevent natural disasters we can prevent too much damage as a result of carelessness and poor preparation. Your business is important to us call us to day to talk about how itsAMP can help prevent a knock out blow to your business!