How to Prepare Your Business for Hurricane Season

Описание: Your downloadable guide to prepare for a natural disaster at your Business.

Link to download checklist: http://www.dpctechnology.com/hurrican...

Link for Network Assessment: http://www.dpctechnology.com/backupte...

John Rankin -
Hurricane season is here. Storms are unpredictable and their impact can devastate not only the landscape, but also your practice. As a business, we understand the importance of communicating with clients throughout crisis mode. Failing to have a Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan (or BDR) in place can be costly. Hours or days of lost production and unrecoverable data can cause irreversible damage to your practice. How much would losing a couple days of production cost you? Can you practice afford to be down for days? If your data is important to your practice and you cannot afford to have your operations halted for days – even weeks – due to data loss or corruption, then take advantage of our 10 easy, but critical, steps that you need to incorporate into your office network before a natural disaster strikes. A disaster can happen at any time on any day and is likely to occur at the most inconvenient time. If you aren’t already prepared, you run the risk of having the disaster coming before you have a plan to handle it. Here’s our 10 Hurricane Disaster Planning Essentials for Your Practice:
Number One – Have a written plan

As simple as it may sound, just thinking through in ADVANCE what needs to happen if your server is destroyed by a flood or a hurricane wipes out your office, will go a long way in getting it back fast. At a minimum, the plan should contain details on what disaster could happen and a step-by-step process of what to do, who should do it and how.
Every year, we provide our clients with a checklist of items to prepare for a hurricane evacuation. We’ve made a few updates to our checklist, so it’s important for you to download your 2018 Hurricane Preparedness Checklist and fill it out as soon as possible.
Our Hurricane Preparedness Checklist includes emergency contact information, vendor lists, equipment inventories, insurance information, evacuation protocols and protocols or responsibilities for various lengths of downtime.
Number 2 – Hire a trusted professional to help you
Trying to recover your data after a disaster without professional help is one misstep during the recovery process can result in forever losing your data or result in weeks of downtime. Make sure you work with someone who has experience in both setting up business contingency plans (so you have a good framework from which you CAN restore your network) and experience in data recovery.
If you are a Complete Care Client, we will help you fill out the documents and provide inventories of your equipment as part of your plan with us.
Number 3 – Have a communications plan
If something should happen where employees couldn’t access your office, e-mail or use the phones, how should they communicate with you? Make sure your plan includes this information including MULTIPLE communications methods.
Number 4 – Automate Your Backups
If backing up your data depends on a human being doing something, it’s flawed. The #1 cause of data loss is human error. This includes people not swapping out tapes properly, someone not setting up the backup to run properly, and so on. ALWAYS automate your backups so they run like clockwork.
Number 5 – Have an offsite backup of your dataAlways, always, always maintain a recent copy of your data off site, on a different server, or on a storage device. Onsite backups are good, but they won’t help you if they get stolen, flooded, burned or hacked along with your server.
Number 6 – Have remote access and management of your network
Not only will this allow you and your staff to keep working if you can’t go into your office, but you’ll love the convenience it offers. Plus, your IT staff or an IT consultant should be able to access your network remotely in the event of an emergency or for routine maintenance. Make sure they can.

Number 7 – Review Your Insurance Policies
Now is a great time to reach out to your Insurance Agent to discuss your policy. Take inventory of your business equipment. Photograph and videotape items for verification and keep in a safe place. Read your insurance policy and know what is covered and what is not covered. If you purchased any new equipment, make sure it’s added to your policy. Review things such as wind and flood policies, and know your general/specific policy limits and deductibles.

Number 8 – Network documentation
Network documentation is simply a blueprint of the software, data, systems and hardware you have in your company’s network. Your IT manager or IT consultant should put this together for you. This will make the job of restoring your network faster, easier AND cheaper.