Disaster Preparedness For Your Small Business: How To "Weather" Any Storm

 Disaster Preparedness For Your Small Business: How To "Weather" Any Storm 

Do you have a business continuity plan for your employees and your company in the event of a potential disaster? 

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Do you have a business continuity plan for your employees and your business in the event of a potential disaster? Do you routinely back up files and could you restore them in an emergency?

According to the Association of Small Business Development Centers, on average, nearly 60 percent of businesses damaged by a disaster close after one year.

Last year's devastating hurricanes have raised awareness of the importance of disaster planning for businesses large and small. However, the destruction of your company's infrastructure is not limited to natural disasters - it can happen at any time. Everyday mishaps such as computer crashes, network failures and power outages threaten your business every day.

Office Depot has weathered four major hurricanes in the last year alone at its South Florida headquarters and nearly 100 stores in the Gulf region, so it has real-world experience in disaster planning and recovery. To help businesses be better prepared, the retailer has compiled "Disaster Preparedness: Advice You Can Rely On to Weather Any Storm" together

"A solid contingency plan can enable your small business to respond effectively to a crisis and prevent that crisis from becoming a full-blown disaster," says Tom Serio, Director of Business Continuity Management at Office Depot.

According to Serio, the overarching principle in disaster planning and recovery is to protect your most valuable and irreplaceable assets: Your employees and your data. Other recommendations in the guide include:

- Keep employee and local emergency services contact information and key vendor and supplier information up to date and easily accessible. Establish a clear procedure for communication and plan how you will contact each other in different scenarios.

- Protect your business from stalling after a disaster by backing up key data at least once a week. Copy data to removable media such as DVD-R or CD-R or to removable drives such as the Ativa McAfee Flash Memory Drive with antivirus software.

- Move the backup software to a secure location off-site. Store copies and documents you use in your day-to-day business in a secure and fireproof location such as the Sentry Fire-Safe electronic safe.

- Regularly check the data stored on the backup systems to ensure that the correct data is being copied and that it can be restored.