How Prepared Are You For Disaster Recovery?

If your business got hit by a natural disaster that resulted in your "losing everything" -- would that "everything" include your company's digital records and history? It shouldn't.The recent tornadoes that tore through Virginia a few hundred miles from where I live got me thinking about disaster recovery. My example is a bad one, though probably a typical one -- few of us think enough about disaster and disaster recovery until one strikes close to us, or a large one such as Katrina captures the attention of all of us.

And that's the inherent problem with natural disasters -- we don't see them coming the way we do a business turndown or recession. They're out there -- we all know that -- but it's also all too easy to avoid thinking about them.

So how about spending some time, early in May -- with the season's thunderstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes and etc. getting extra attention from both reasonable meteorologists and alarmist TV weatherpeople -- thinking about just what shape your business is in if hit by a calamity.

No better place to start than with some of bMighty's coverage of the subject, including:

9+ Steps to Disaster Recovery Planning

A good disaster planning video is here.

Some small and midsized business disaster recovery insights are here.

Here's one I wrote a couple of months ago about the importance not only of planning for disaster recovery but also practicing your recovery plans.

Like I said at the outset, it shouldn't take a nearby or widely publicized natural (or, for that matter, man-made) disaster to spur us to think about our preparations and recovery plans, and to practice putting those plans into effect.

And it surely shouldn't take facing a fire or tornado or flood to make us think about what we should have been planning for and practicing for before the smoke or the winds or the water began to rise.