If the events of the recent and unprecedented 2021 Texas Power Crisis have taught us anything it’s to BE PREPARED! Business continuity planning is something all CEOs and business owners MUST seriously think about to help ensure their company is prepared for a disaster and remains up and running – no matter what. Properly safeguarding your company’s network from disaster is not impossible, however, we know it can be hard to know where to start. That’s why we’ve created a list of 3 crucial questions you can ask yourself to help determine how well your business is currently set up for success… or in some cases, failure… in the event of an unfortunate emergency.

 

Are You Ready For The Next Disaster?
FREE 27-Point IT Systems Security And Performance Assessment Reveals How Exposed Your Company Is To Extensive Downtime, If Your Backups Are Working And Configured Properly, And If you Truly Are Secure From Hackers, Viruses, And Rogue Employees. 
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3 Questions Every Business Owner Must Ask Themselves Before Disaster Strikes:

Examples of potential disasters include flood, fire, natural disaster, hardware failure, data corruption, or malicious malware and ransomware. Make sure to plan for ALL potential disasters to ensure your business is always running and profitable. The following questions will help you get started assessing what you already have in place and what you need to put in place BEFORE the next disaster.

  1. Do You Have An Emergency-Preparedness Team Assembled? This is your disaster A-Team, ready to spring into action immediately should a disaster occur. Also known as your “Disaster Recovery Team”, this group of appointed employees should be recruited from every department within your organization, ensuring all departments are involved and informed. This team will help you create and implement a disaster-preparedness plan (also known as a Business Continuity Plan, or BCP). This team should work closely with a trusted third-party managed IT service provider to make sure all company computer network bases are covered in case of catastrophe.
  2. Do You Have A Simple But Effective Business Continuity Plan? Would people know where to go? Who to call? How to log in and access data remotely? Every business should have some type of plan in place for continued operation after a disaster. A Business Continuity Plan explicitly outlines how your business will remain up and running should a catastrophe hit – think of it as your disaster roadmap. Hopefully, you’ll never need it, but having a simple plan will help you sleep a lot easier at night. This is the document that will drastically determine the difference between ruin and redemption for your company.
    • When drafting your Business Continuity Plan, you must determine the following:
      1. Identify The Most Probable Threats – In order to best prepare, you need to identify (at least) the most likely scenario that could potentially threaten your company. Business continuity threats can range from office damage due to sprinkler systems or fires to natural disasters to employee strikes and cyber-attacks.
      2. Identify All Potential Outcomes – Knowing ALL potential outcomes to disasters that are most likely to happen and have a severe and negative impact on your company’s survival will help you determine the right course of action for EVERY scenario. If you don’t think through every possible outcome, there’s no way for you to determine all the steps necessary to guarantee the BEST result.
  3.  Are Your Company’s Data Backup And Recovery Solutions In-Place and Working? When planning for any possible disaster, verifying your current data backups are working correctly and your data can be recovered quickly is something you must do (and regularly). Ask your IT service provider to provide daily proof that your backups actually work. If your current IT service provider isn’t doing this, you should ask them WHY. Also, if you do not have both an onsite and a cloud-based data backup solution in place, your company’s data will not be able to be restored fast (if at all) in the event of a disaster.

 

So… How Did YOUR Business Stack Up?

After asking yourself these 3 questions, what did you determine? If you already have an emergency-preparedness team and a Business Continuity Plan in place, that’s great! Just keep in mind, your Business Continuity Plan should be a living document – revisit it often and make amendments as much as needed. Conduct tests with every revision to ensure the plan you have in place indeed works.

On the other hand, if you realized your business does not have any kind of disaster planning in place and is therefore being left wide open to a multitude of threats that can potentially derail your operations for good, then it’s time to ACT. Get your emergency-preparedness team together, get a Business Continuity Plan started, and start working with an IT service provider you can trust to get your company’s network secure, backed up, and ready for anything that comes your way.

 

Get Help With Your Business’s Disaster Recovery Plan.

The events of the 2021 Texas Power Crisis was tough on our state and we’d like to extend this offer of a FREE Disaster Readiness Network Assessment to you. As a potential client, we’ll help you assess your network’s disaster readiness and let you know if your data is protected and how quickly you could be back up and running again if disaster strikes. If you’re a San Antonio or Austin area business with 25 computers or more, give us a call today at (210) 245-6900 or click this link: https://www.juerntech.com/15-minute-discovery-call/ to schedule a quick, 15-minute Discovery Call to see how we can help you prepare for the next disaster.