I recently ran into a friend who told me that during this fall’s historic flooding in Georgia, his company’s office was flooded, displacing over 250 employees and causing mass confusion. I’ll bet if you asked the owners of that company two years ago if they thought they were at risk of flooding, they would have laughed in your face. After all, at the time, Atlanta was in the midst of a historic drought.

The floods reinforced one of the most important things I’ve learned being in the disaster recovery/business continuity industry: You never know when disaster is going to strike so prepare for the unexpected. Unfortunately, too many organizations don’t take IT disaster recovery seriously thinking, like perhaps my friend’s company did, “Hey, we’re not in a flood plain. What do we have to worry about?”

Without a contingency plan, there’s a lot to worry about. But you can give yourself peace of mind by getting your IT business continuity strategy together now. Make sure it addresses the following key areas: people, equipment, applications, data and network.

People – If your offices are damaged, what do you do about your workforce? Where will you relocate your employees? A solid business continuity plan needs to address an alternate recovery location that accommodates everyone in the organization.

Equipment – In addition to space for your employees, you need the equipment that enables them to do their jobs, including workstations, fax machines, phones, copiers, etc. Every business function needs to be addressed, including warehousing and distribution.

Applications – You might not realize how many applications support your company’s operations until they’re no longer working. Your IT disaster recovery plan must evaluate the company’s applications and determine which are mission critical and which can wait a few days before being brought back online.

Data – Having an IT disaster recovery plan for your data refers to more than just the raw data that resides on your systems. You also have to account for the paper documents that support the workflow of the organization. All of that needs to be traced so that it can be recovered if necessary.

Network - In the aftermath of a disaster, how will you communicate with the outside world? If you have an online retail site, how do you keep that working seamlessly? If you’ve planned ahead, you can make it so that a flip of the switch transitions operations from your primary headquarters to your recovery site, keeping network interruptions to a minimum.

As you see, there’s a lot of work that goes into the planning process, and it’s not something you want to do while the water is rising.

Has your company’s operations been impacted by a disaster? Got questions about the disaster recovery process? Post a question or comment below, or you can also contact me directly at 678-250-7097 or at sgruber@canvassystems.com.