NatDis - Preparing your business for disaster

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Preparing your business for disaster

By Joyce M. Rosenberg, Associated Press, 6/14/2001 12:29

NEW YORK (AP) It didn't take long for disaster to strike after the Atlantic hurricane season began June 1. Tropical Storm Allison caused perhaps billions of dollars in damage to homes and businesses in Texas and Louisiana last week.

And this was just the start of what's expected to be a summer of severe weather in many parts of the country. So preparing your small business for the possibility of hurricanes, flooding, tornadoes and power outages has to be a priority.

''People really do fall short'' in taking steps that could mitigate damage, said Carol Chastang, a spokeswoman with the Small Business Administration. Often, she said, they don't take precautions until after disaster has happened a situation that recalls the old line about closing the barn door after the horses have fled.

The SBA Web site (www.sba.gov) has a checklist noting four main areas of concern: protecting buildings and equipment; keeping operations running; protecting data and communications; and getting adequate insurance coverage. More information on preparing a business for possible disaster can be found at the Federal Emergency Management Agency site (www.fema.org).

Of course, disaster preparation can't prevent all the damage. At Don's Seafood and Steaks in Baton Rouge, La., employees moved furniture and equipment and transferred food to a freezer at another location. Still, 14 inches of water that flowed into the restaurant did as much as $20,000 in damage, general manager Eric Mulina said.

However, ''we survived pretty good,'' Mulina said, in part because Don's has flood insurance.

Disaster preparation often involves common sense. Chastang said many business owners make the mistake of storing valuable files and equipment in places where they are most vulnerable to disaster.

''It can ruin you or set you back if you were to lose it,'' she said.

Consider what happened in Houston:

Tropical Storm Allison caused floods at businesses and institutions including the Houston Symphony, whose waterlogged underground offices were unreachable when a reporter called for comment several days later. The symphony's library of thousands of musical scores was inundated, and valuable musical instruments were found floating in water.

And researchers at the Texas Medical Center were trying to see if they could salvage years of work after laboratory samples and thousands of animals used in their research were lost to basement flooding or power outages.

With most businesses now dependent on computers, protecting data is critical. If a fire or flood destroyed your PC's hard drive or your entire network, you could lose your customer records, accounting information, important documents in short, all the data you need to run your business.

You can avert calamity by consulting a disaster recovery specialist, a company that sets up systems or provides software to help businesses protect electronic data. According to Bill Bedlsoe, president of the William Travis Group, a Schaumburg, Ill.-based firm involved in disaster recovery, there are several ways to protect your information.

The simplest and cheapest is to back up the information on your PC or network with a storage system such as a CD-ROM. But, Bedsloe said, ''You have to get that (copy) offsite it's not good enough to have that sitting next to a computer.''

Most expensive is linking to an offsite system that's in effect a twin of your computer or network. Every transaction in your computer will also occur at the remote site, which you'll be able to link or travel to if your system is down.

In between, Bedsloe said, is electronic vaulting, an offsite storage facility which requires you to actually store data to that site periodically.

Being sure you have adequate insurance is also crucial. Chastang noted that many companies think they are covered for floods, and then find out too late they weren't.

Similarly, people operating home businesses might think work-related property is covered under their homeowners policy. Probably not so while your insurance company will pay for a new sofa for your family room, it won't cover your business PC.

You might also consider business interruption insurance to cover lost profits.

A business owner likely will worry about the sometimes high cost of disaster preparation.

Todd Gordon, general manager of IBM's Global Services business continuity and recovery services, suggested owners do an analysis of their business.

''What are the most critical elements of what you do and which things do you need to protect the most?'' he said. In deciding whether data or equipment should be protected, ask ''what does it do for you and how often do you have to worry about it?''

It might help to look at disaster preparation as a kind of insurance, he said.

''If there's no planning and backup, it could be cataclysmic.''

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2001


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