Do Not Take This Warning For Granted. Be Proactive.
I understand that sometimes we believe issues such as these are or can be blown out of proportion. Unfortunately, we cannot take anything for granted anymore. Yes, we cannot prevent everything that happens in the world today, but I am an avid believer in taking action to mitigate. I rather suffer ten percent of the consequences rather than a hundred percent. Everything in life can be mitigated if not prevented.
Small and midsized businesses, you are the most vulnerable to all the mayhem that is going on today. Take preventive measures to protect your businesses. You want to be able to continue doing business before, during and after the disaster. Therefore, if you currently do not have a Disaster and Recovery plan in place for Business Continuity, get one now. Below are 4 basic steps to begin with:-
Establishing a disaster recovery plan can be done in the following four steps:
1) Take a potential risk inventory. Make a list of every potential cause of data loss and the solutions to each. Your list should include losses that won't affect the business very much, and those that would shut the business down temporarily or permanently. Information Technology experts can assist you with creating the potential risk inventory - as they will have the knowledge and experience to identify possibilities that you are not likely to think of but need to plan for all the same. These IT experts will also be able discuss preventative solutions to guard against each type of potential data loss.
2) Rate each of your potential data loss situations. How likely is it for each of the items on your risk inventory to occur? Rating them in order of importance and likeliness to occur will help you determine where to focus your disaster recovery plan efforts.
3) Develop your disaster recovery plan. Go through each of your potential risks and their solutions, and determine how long it would take you to recover from the loss of data for each risk. Could your business be offline for 24 hours? A week? Depending on the nature of your business, being offline for even just 24 hours could result in your losing customers to your competition. Look at ways to reduce the length of time it would take you to recover from each type of data loss risk.
4) Put your disaster recovery plan to the test. Once you've created your plan of action for recovering lost data, you should test your solutions. A disaster recovery plan is just a plan until it can be tested and proven.
(Content by Managed Services Provider University)
Once you have completed these steps, call in your IT personnel and get the controls implemented. Hope this helps.
FRAUD IS A VIOLENT CRIME - PREVENT IT
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for your comments. They are greatly appreciated.