Back stuff up, move it offsite
Disaster recovery tends to be a term bounced around huge corporations, but small businesses may be more vulnerable to a catastrophe.Information is power. Losing the information that makes your business what it is would be no different than having the electricity cut off from the building.
A little bit of preparation, and sticking to an ongoing plan for backing up important data, whether it is on paper or on a hard drive, will mean all the difference between getting a business underway again, or watching the sheriff auction off pieces of your life.
For any kind of backup, an offsite option should be a first choice. Locks can be cracked in the office, safes can be stolen. The nominal annual fee for a safe deposit box in a bank makes it a necessity for the truly important papers.
A printed list of valuable clients and the details that enable you to provide value to them should be easy enough to generate. Letting those valued customers know that a disaster hasn't put you down for the count may help regain their business when things return to normal.
On the electronic side, services like EMC's MozyPro, and iBackup, establish scheduled automatic data backups over a secure Internet connection. Data like accounts receivable and CRM contacts merit these backup services, if only for the automated hands-off approach that may be the difference between the trivial recovery of a database, or bankruptcy.
posted by cathal @ 21:37
