Disaster Readiness For Small And Medium Business
Do you have a plan in place for your business in case of disaster? And by disaster I do not just mean hurricane, tornado or alien invasion. How about a fire, a water main break or even street construction that keeps both you and your customers away from your business? It may not even take a physical disaster to cripple your enterprise, cybertheft can impact your business from the inside and it happens more and more all the time. Studies show that 1 in 4 SMBs will experience some form of disaster that interrupts business.
Don’t let a disaster cost your business.
A study from 2011 by Symantec reported that most businesses don’t have a disaster plan in place. In fact, 41% said that it never even occurred to them to have one and about the same number said that a disaster plan wasn’t a priority.
Other studies have reported that the median cost of downtime for a small business is over $12,500 per day.
Less than half back up data on a weekly basis and only 23% back up daily.
Other businesses reported their disaster plans were in place but had never been tested.
The 2012 Report from Symantec has some useful advice about using technology as the key weapon in SMB disaster preparedness:
Start planning now: Develop a disaster preparedness plan today. Evaluate how strategic technologies such as mobile, virtualization and cloud can help in those efforts.
Implement strategic technologies: Adopt integrated cloud backup for offsite storage and disaster recovery, and automated physical to virtual (P2V) backup conversion so you can recover your physical system to a virtual machine in case of a server failure.
Protect your information: Use comprehensive security and backup solutions to protect your physical, virtual and mobile systems. You may even opt to backup to the cloud.
Review and test your disaster preparedness: This should be completed at least once a quarter.
So how would your business fare with more than one day away, with no current data, or a disaster plan that just didn’t work?
Other information that may spur you into action:
Of those companies with no plan in place 43% will never reopen and only 29% of them remain open after two years.
There are other resources available to advise and recommend steps to take to get ready.
The Small Business Administration.
So get ready for a disaster. Because it probably will happen. And even if you think you’re prepared, you may be surprised. Dan Simon, president of Cognito, a marketing and PR firm, has a great article on the Forbes website about what was done right and wrong during Hurricane Sandy.
