What is disaster planning?

Could you be held legally liable?

Although computers have revolutionized our personal and business lives, many users fail to recognize their computer systems and their software information as assets that must be protected. Thousands of businesses lose millions of dollars worth of information to fire, power outage, theft, equipment failure, and even simple operator mistakes. Studies show that nearly half the companies that lose their data in a disaster never reopen. Protection for theft, natural occurrences, power disturbances and information loss is available however most computer users seem to ignore them. Disaster planning is the "preparing today for a catastrophe tomorrow". Your company should have plans set in place in the event of any disaster. What would you do if your building burned to the ground? Where would you set up office in the interim? What would you do for furniture? Phones? What about your computer and all of your company records?

According to "YOUR COMPUTER SECURITY GUIDE", a white paper published by Verbatim Corp.:

• More than ten percent of desktop computers are damaged by "electrical events" and the average repair bills range from $350 to $500.
• Two-thirds of the dollar value of computer-related loss is a result of theft. Thieves not only steal all the computer equipment and printers but they also steal the backup tapes which are sitting next to the computer.
• Some individuals view data back-ups as a waste of time, but just 100MB of information can cost up to $500,000 in lost time and man hours to recreate. A information disaster and recovery plan needs to be created and used!

Even though you might say, "We have someone doing our backups" you need to look over what's being done, if it's being done right and were are the backup tapes being stored. Also, could this person who is doing the backups be used more productively somewhere else?

Regular computer maintenance is part of your overall computer disaster and recovery plan. You need to have the computers cleaned free of all the dust and dirt that accumulates inside. Dirt and dust acts like a blanket, insulating the chips from the cooling breezes pulled into the computer by its fans. This dirt lies on all parts and causing the chips to overheat. This overheating causes premature demise of the computer hardware. The equipment needs to be cleaned semi-annually and more often in dustier and dirtier environments. Nicotine and smoke from cigarettes is another killer to your computer equipment by coating all the read and write heads on floppy, CD and optical drives. Kitchen grease and smoke is bad for the computer equipment too!

Remember that disaster planning also includes running trial disasters to test the plan. If you do not practice on a regular basis, then do not expect to be able to recover in the event of a real emergency.

Please note, in an effort to keep costs reasonable, all drop offs and pick ups are scheduled.

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