Disaster Preparedness Part 5

 Those of us over a certain age remember the word "Rolodex," a card file of names and addresses of important contacts.

These days the "rolo" is more likely to be an electronic file of some sort, and it is still critical.

A cloud backup is great as long as the Internet is working, a spreadsheet file is great if you back it up off site somewhere, and a printout may be useful if stored in a safe place away from the business site.

A separate file should include employee contact information.

And, speaking of employees, have they been briefed on your disaster planning? 

Never depend on a single storage method for critical data.

Businesses in Florida and the west are learning that lesson the hard way (and families are also). 

Disaster Preparedness Part 4

Soggy paper.

Never a good thing, and a difficult salvage job.

Much of your paper may have originated from digital systems, which hopefully are backed up offsite. Some routine paperwork may not be a big loss. But some paperwork may be critical, and you do not want to lose that.

Critical Documents:

Entity legal documents, board minutes, licenses, tax returns, blue prints, warranties, vehicle titles ..... all of these may be critical to your business operations, and some may be difficult to replace.

Advisors and Vendors:

Your CPA and attorney should have backups of some of these documents (if your CPA or attorney office is in your same neighborhood you should ask about their digital backup planning). This can be a great help, but advisors will not have day-to-day paperwork. If you use a payroll service the service will have digital backups of your payroll details. Your bank will have digital copies of your banking records for multiple years.

Digitizing Records:

A flatbed scanner can be had for less than $100 dollars, and is handy for quick scans of small numbers of documents. A faster document feed scanner can be had for under $300. These allow the capture and backup of digital images.  This allows for easy digital backup offsite and can cut your file cabinet usage.

Not the Basement:

Many commercial building have basements, and it provides for close but out-of-the-way storage.

Basements are also the first to flood. Bad place for paperwork.

Retrieving and rebuilding your records is time consuming and costly, which justifies the time required for backups.

Assess your risk. Some locations are riskier than others. All locations have at least some fire risk, and most have some level of wind risk. And some are in hurricane zones.

You may be lucky, you may not. Do not depend on luck.

Disaster Preparedness Part 3

It is time to sit down and list the types of disasters your business might be subject to, the probability of such a disaster, and predict the least and worst damage and disruption.

Can we predict every possibility? No. Many years ago a client had a semi truck drive through his front window and destroy his entire store. Who would have predicted that?

The beginning of preparedness is recognition. Consider:

Fire

Flood

Wind / Tornado

Hurricane

Earthquake

Bio or chem event (the refinery down the street springs a leak)

Power outages / surges / gas leaks

Fires in adjacent businesses

Active shooter in vicinity

Railroad derailments

Risk management is such a cheerful art and science. (?)

In the near future we discuss planning for potential threats.

Disaster Preparedness Part 2

 

Data, data, and data.

The world runs on data.  Your business runs on data. Most businesses cannot operate for long without data, both current and historical.

Data backup is critical. System backup is critical. Hardware redundancy is critical. 

The Cloud

Cloud storage is one way of avoiding physical jeopardy to your data collections. 

Downside, you need functioning Internet service to access the cloud, which may not be available immediately after a disaster.

Hardware Storage

Before the cloud physical backup (often tape) was a daily occurrence.

Now many skip that step.

Given the low cost of massive (terabyte level) storage, keeping some periodic data backup on a hard drive may be valuable.

Hardware Backup

A flood just destroyed all of your hardware.

Consider keeping a laptop, loaded with your primary software packages, at a remote location and off of the network.

At least there is one machine that can be used to communicate with the outside world while other services are restored.

A large portable battery pack, always kept charged, can run a laptop for quite a while (small portable charger packs will do smart phones, but not a laptop).

Where to Back Up

If your home is in the same danger zone as your business, that will not work.

Find a place that would not be subject to the same flood or brush fire as your business.