IT Consultant Group

Have you given much thought to how your small business would handle a disaster? Not just the natural ones (flood, earthquake, hurricane), but human error too. Something as simple as an employee in accounts receivable accidentally deleting a file that contains the personal information of your customers can spell disaster for a small business.

The fact is many small businesses don’t have IT staff or resources dedicated to disaster preparedness, which leads to inconsistent and incomplete backup of vital business data. Symantec’s 2011 SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey found that SMBs are not making disaster preparedness a priority until they experience a disaster or data loss. The cost of not being prepared is too high to ignore. The median cost of downtime for an SMB at $12,500 per day, not to mention it causes your customers to leave.

With National Small Business Week drawing to a close, let’s revisit Symantec’s recommendations to ensure small businesses’ IT systems are prepared for disaster.

• Don’t wait until it’s too late: Start mapping out a disaster preparedness plan today. The plan should identify your critical resources.
• Protect information completely: Use appropriate security and backup solutions to archive important files.
• Get employees involved: Educate employees on computer security best practices and what to do if they misplace information.
• Test frequently: Regular disaster recovery testing is invaluable and should be done anytime anything changes in your environment.
• Review your plan: You should review your disaster preparedness plan at least once a quarter.