From flash flooding to terrorist attacks, disasters around the world have been increasing over the past few years. This has certainly been detrimental for the average citizen, but business owners have faced even more difficulty, since such an event often costs them their livelihood. If you don’t prepare for the worst, a single disaster could render your network useless. Fortunately, the following disaster tips can help you ensure business continuity in the face of catastrophe.
Perform Risk Assessment
For centuries, the main way people dealt with disasters was by responding to them. More recently, though, it’s become apparent that mitigating and planning for these events is much more economical. To get started on protecting your business network from potential disasters, you must first conduct a risk assessment to identify what those disasters may be.
A proper risk assessment first involves identifying potential disasters. These hazards will vary between businesses. After all, an Alaskan business won’t have to worry about hurricanes as much as a Florida company. After identifying potential hazards, it’s necessary to rank them on the likelihood of their occurrence. After this, you must figure out how to eliminate the risk or mitigate its potential effects while focusing on the most likely disasters.
Focus on Redundancy
Your business network performs a host of jobs, but maintaining your data is likely the most important. If a storm comes through and damages your network, the simple inability to recover essential data could be enough to shut you down. This is exactly why redundancy is so essential.
Redundancy can be performed in a variety of areas. Do you utilize VoIP services? Having landlines will ensure you can continue operations if the internet goes down. Have a massive storage network onsite? Why not keep the information in the cloud as well? Redundancy is an important aspect of business continuity, and having it in your data storage could make or break the company.
Talk to Professionals
No matter how hard you prepare for a potential disaster that could damage your business network, the simple fact is that you’re probably not an emergency management professional. This means the most innovative and logical plans that you envision can fall apart because you overlooked a single consideration.
This is why it’s best to utilize an organization with experience in the area. The right company will offer online backup of both digital and paper files along with business disaster recovery strategies that utilize virtual desktops. This will ensure you can get back to work even if your network is damaged during a disaster.
Protect Infrastructure Equipment
The best plan in the world isn’t going to stop every disaster. This means that, if you have forewarning of an event, you need to undertake strategies to protect the essential infrastructure of your company. This can include anything from fleet vehicles to electronic retail products, but your network equipment is certainly one of the most important.
If a wildfire is approaching within the next few days, relocating network equipment is an appropriate response. If a hurricane is bearing down on the coast, it’s a good idea to move the equipment to higher levels of the building to prevent potential flood damage. Backups, redundancy and professional help can go a long way, but why risk losing your network hardware just because your data is safe?
America lost over $306 billion in 2017 due to natural disasters, and there’s no indication that this number will go down in the following years. Having a business continuity plan in place and properly preparing for such an event will decrease the likelihood that you’ll become part of this statistic. Your business network is vital to your company’s survival, so the investment to protect it is well worth the cost.