With the seemingly endless stream of storms affecting the UK this winter, it has highlighted the need for businesses to assess their preparation and planning in the event of a weather related outage. The truly awful images of floods that we have all seen over the last few weeks and the damage and disruption caused has brought home the need to plan for a natural disaster.
Planning for the worst
But what can you do? It’s important to look at the pre-emptive steps your organisation can take to plan and prepare for the worst, should it happen. Look at how your business’ systems can be engineered to keep running if a severe event occurs. Reducing single points of failure with your technology can help and it’s one less thing to worry about when you already have the stress of losing your business premises.
Safe in the cloud
By moving your data to the cloud, you are reducing the problems relating to your physical premises. Storing your systems and data in the cloud means that if your office is out of action, you and your staff can work from home or any temporary location. This doesn’t protect you from losing stock, devices and other assets, but you will still have your critical business data. If the worst does happen, you will be able to continue to operate and reduce the impact of a natural disaster on your clients and the business.
It’s important to develop a plan to keep your data safe. If you decide to adopt cloud services, depending on your requirements, several options are available. HPE has taken a look at the options for business after the damage caused by several hurricanes.
3-2-1 Strategy
If you haven’t ever considered your backup strategy a good rule to apply to your business data is based upon the 3-2-1 strategy. Keep at least 3 copies of your data, storing 2 backup copies on different types of media with 1 copy located offsite. It’s important to understand your backup requirements, especially if you have strict industry guidelines. For example, HMRC require businesses to hold data based upon the 6+1 rule.
Look at your business continuity and disaster recovery planning and make sure this is assessed and adjusted on an on-going basis. Technology changes and so do your requirements, it’s not a set and forget plan.
Unfortunately, it looks ever more likely extreme weather events will continue to occur and making sure your planning is up to scratch can help at a difficult time.
If you would like to discuss your planning and need help to address these issues please contact us.