Have you ever lost an hour of work on your computer?

Now imagine if you lost days or weeks of work – or imagine losing your client database, financial records, and all of the work files your company has ever produced or compiled. Imagine what would happen if your network went down for days, where you couldn’t access e-mail or the information on your PC. How frustrating would that be?

Or, what if a major storm, flood, or fire destroyed your office and all of your files? Or if a virus wiped out your server…do you have an emergency recovery plan in place that you feel confident in? How quickly do you think you could recover, if at all?
  
Many small business owners tend to ignore or forget about taking steps to secure their company’s network from these types of catastrophes until disaster strikes. By then it’s too late and the damage is done.

"93% of companies that lost access to their data for 10 days or more due to a disaster filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster, and 50% filed for bankruptcy immediately." (Source: National Archives & Records Administration in Washington.)

Your first response may be this is an astonishing statistic.  But, is it all that surprising?

Obviously, this statistic would not even exist if all business owners had effective disaster recovery plans in place. I'm sure that these companies that declared bankruptcy after disaster thought their businesses were secure from the consequences the very disaster that put their company out of business.  Unfortunately, there is a huge gap in the knowledge small business owner need to have in order to develop an effective disater recovery plan.    

In the next series of blogs I will go over developing an emergency recovery plan for your business that will keep your business functioning through the loss of your computer systems or communication systems as well as loss of access to your company data and customer databases.

Having a disaster recovery plan is critical to not only your company continuing to conduct business but also staying in business.