5 Tips for Preparing Your Business for Disaster

What happens to your business when disaster strikes? In the wake of the hurricanes, tsunami, earthquakes, and terrorist attacks of the last several years, disaster preparedness and recovery are hot topics these days. Preparation and a solid recovery plan are critical to maintaining business continuity and relations with your clients both during and after a disaster.

We’ve laid out some steps you can take now to make your critical business functions less vulnerable, and to help you plan for what to do if disaster strikes.

1. Identify top business continuity priorities in advance. You can’t prepare for everything. And, after a disaster strikes, you may not be able to recover all your business functions right away.

Rather than trying to do either, prepare now by picking the top two or three priorities where you’ll focus your efforts. For instance, our priority is to protect and recover our client data and our internal accounting records. We have developed an off-site backup routine where we swap out a backup to an off-site location each week. You may need new copies of your financial records. We can help you put your lives and businesses back together as we will have everything at our fingertips.

2. Assess risk. What do you have that’s valuable and vulnerable? Imagine if a catastrophic event struck tomorrow and shut your business down temporarily. What would you need to restore the critical business functions you identified in #1?

Your business functions probably depend on your office space, computers, and other office equipment, including access to your data.

Take the opportunity to think beyond natural disasters. Viruses, worms, hackers, human error, data corruption, system failure, theft or other physical loss can destroy your data at any time.

3. Make a plan. Once you know what your top priorities and main vulnerabilities are, it’s time to get going on a plan. Your goals:

  • Prevent as many disasters as you can now. A good back-up plan can be your safety net.
  • Recover your business-critical functions immediately after a disaster.
  • Restore your business to normalcy as soon as possible afterward.

Consider these scenarios:

  • Office space: Fire, flood, or utility problem renders your office space uninhabitable. Computers or network: A virus or worm cripples your computers, server, network, or access to email or the Internet.
  • Paper files: Burglary, accident, or act of nature leaves you without years’ worth of original records.

If multiple people work in your office, also consider:

  • Teamwork: You may want to assemble a disaster preparation and recovery team. If so, be sure to assign roles. Identify a team manager and back-ups, point people for each of your top priorities, and someone to be in charge of temporary repairs to facilities.

  • Communication: How will you share information, both immediately following a disaster, and during the recovery process? Designate a caller, or make a phone tree. You may also want to set up a meeting point/time to use if telephones fail. Decide how to best keep employee emergency contact information up to date.

  • Note: The Red Cross requests that you use telephones immediately after a widespread disaster for life-threatening emergencies only, so that the lines stay clear for emergency responders.

4. Do what you can now. Get cracking on the items from your preparedness plan that you can take care of now. These may include:

  • Document management. If you’re not using an electronic document storage system now, look into one.We knew using an electronic system would make it easier to retrieve client information, and it has. It’s also reduced our dependence on paper supplies and storage space.

  • Keep copies of financial records, property and vehicle titles off the premises. You may need tax returns and financial records from prior years to support your business interruption claims and apply for SBA disaster loans. (You can scan and store these documents in an electronic document management system.)

  • Make multiple backups of other critical computer data and documents now, and make a plan to do it regularly. Store them off the premises.

  • Reserve a few company checks and purchase orders for buying post-disaster supplies, and keep them off the premises.

  • Review your insurance. Make sure you understand what’s covered and what’s not. Make changes if appropriate.

  • Photograph or videotape your office to document your assets for insurance purposes. Keep these records off the premises.

  • Keep a copy of emergency contact information for your insurance agent and employees off the premises.

5. Revisit your plan regularly. Be sure to revisit your plan at least annually, and especially as your business goes through major changes, as employees come and go, as you adopt new technology, and as your business’ needs grow. It’s also important to keep your disaster recovery plan fresh in your mind so that you know where to find it, and you know what to do if the time comes.

For more information: Here are some resources to use when developing your disaster recovery plan.

U.S. Small Business Association The U.S. SBA provides information on its web site about disaster recovery for recent victims, disaster loan assistance, and disaster preparedness considerations.

Institute for Business and Home Safety The Institute for Business and Home Safety, a nonprofit association, provides planning tools and advice on its Open for Business Resource Page.

Disaster Recovery: A Guide to Financial Issues Point your clients to this public service publication of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, AICPA Foundation, American Red Cross, and the National Endowment for Financial Education.

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