Top Tips on Disaster Recovery

Assessing the risks and working out how you would respond to a disaster, both short and long term, are key to surviving an incident.

Back up data regularly and store copies off site in a secure place. Practice restoring the data in an IT system outside your own to ensure it works.

Ensure that important paper documents, such as contracts and employee information, are protected. Make copies and use fire resistant and waterproof storage containers.

Keep a list of contact details for your staff, customers and suppliers off site so that you can contact them in the event of an incident.

Be clear about what your insurance policies cover and what they don't, so that there are no nasty surprises when you subsequently make a claim. Keep copies of the relevant policies off site so that you know immediately what to do in the event of an incident.

Identify your business critical activities and set out the tasks needed to restore them and resume trading off site. Identify the core resources that support your critical activities and consider how you would source replacements.

Have an emergency pack which will include your business recovery plan, as well as a first aid kit, mobile telephone and masks to protect against fumes and dust.

Make an inventory of equipment, materials, products and any other assets to give you an overview of the business. This will make it easier to work out losses and identify gaps in core resources after an incident.

Make arrangements for a temporary base - you may not be able to operate out of your existing premises for weeks or even months, depending on the type of disaster. Remember any site must comply with health and safety rules.

Test the feasibility of your plan and review it once a year to keep it current. Tasks in the plan should be assigned to designated people. Being organised is a vital part of incident recovery.

For more information request a brochure or call today on 01424 858100.