What if disaster strikes tomorrow? Next week? Next month? Are you ready? Is your business small? Contingency plans are essential if you plan to keep a business running for years to come. The FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) said more than 40% of businesses could not reopen after a disaster. Even if a business reopens, less than a third are still in business two years later. Therefore, having a small business disaster recovery plan is essential for any small business owner, and the key is to be prepared in advance.
Create a Small Business Contingency Plan
A business emergency plan has two fundamental aspects: (1) physical operation and (2) continuity and online communication. Depending on the type of business, one may be more important to your business than the other. Suppose you have a small business that relies on physical operations (like a brick-and-mortar merchant or another walk-in). In that case, there are ways to have a business contingency plan that will keep your physical assets, your employees, your customers, and your business safe. Remember that disaster planning and recovery is not only about the business itself but also about your employees and customers. As part of your small business disaster recovery plan, consider the following:
Have a backup generator, so the power stays on for a while during a power outage.
Have a small business contingency plan to ensure your installations are quick and safe.
Have an alternate location to do business if the head office cannot be used.
Business disaster plans for communication and continuity
The heart of your company's disaster recovery plan is to make sure you stay in touch with your team, suppliers, customers, and other people you do business with. Although "disaster" can mean a number of things, depending on where you are and what type of business you operate, if you're hiring people, your priority will likely be to make sure they're in good health, safe, and able to communicate with them to guard them, and of course, keep the business safe. As part of your small business disaster recovery plan, consider the following:
Do your employees know who to call? Where to check? What to do? Make a contingency plan for your small business so your team isn't confused about what to do in a fast-moving event such as a tornado.
How do you plan to stay in business and serve customers?
Is there a plan to communicate with employees if phone and Internet are not available?
No matter what kind of small business contingency plan you engage in, online continuity can be your lifeline after a disaster. Planning and recovery can be simplified when you already store data in the cloud and not in one place. In other words, if you store all your business documents on a single computer or server, onsite or offsite, you could lose everything in the event of a disaster where the server is. Something such as a major natural disaster such as a fire, flood, or even theft can ruin a business if records are not properly kept.
Cloud hosting is the use of a virtual server that is part of a network that involves data centers in multiple locations. It just means that your data is not stored in one place, which means that a physical event in one place cannot easily destroy it. All of your data and software files can be in the cloud, which means you can access them from anywhere. This is huge for a disaster recovery plan, as it can be the difference between survival and failure. Don't expect a small business emergency before you have a contingency plan; plan for the worst, but hope for the best.
Disaster planning and recovery insurance
We all have insurance in our personal lives: homeowners, cars, health, and maybe more. It's so important to have solid coverage as part of your disaster recovery plan. You really need to talk to your insurance agent. There are only a few companies that offer commercial insurance for small businesses. It's very different from the other types of insurance you have.
So what are some types of small business insurance to consider? You probably need insurance for your physical assets, but also for interruptions to your cyber existence and key people insurance (life insurance for key people in a business or those without whom the business could not continue).
If disaster strikes, here's what to consider:
First and foremost, protect the life and safety of anyone on the premises, such as employees or customers.
Second, assess the extent of the damage and think about how you would like to return to work.
If it is a physical disaster, one of the first calls should be to your insurance agent to document any damage. If there is a liability issue because customers or employees have been physically injured, the insurance agency must have complete and accurate documentation.
A DDoS attack is a distributed denial-of-service attack. This occurs when multiple systems flood bandwidth or resources with one or more web servers at a destination. In other words, it is an attempt to make your service unavailable online. These attacks are becoming more and more frequent. For example, a large-scale DDoS attack caused massive disruption in the United States in October 2016. If your small business is involved in e-commerce or even uses the Internet for day-to-day operations, this can be dangerous for your business as well. It is as bad for your business as a flood or a fire. Therefore, protecting against and mitigating a cyberattack should be part of your small business's contingency plan. You can include data breach insurance in your company's disaster recovery plan.
Finally, one of the reasons why statistics show that many small businesses cannot survive a disaster is because they did not have a small business disaster recovery plan or because they did not have insurance to keep them open after the disaster. The smaller the business, the less likely it is to have a business outage, disaster recovery plan, or coverage. Plan ahead. None of us can predict the future, but planning, both for your physical interests and for your online business, goes a long way towards the survival of your small business.
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