5-Step Disaster Recovery Plan for Your Small Business

Small businesses do not have it easy. They always seem to have their plates full and are relentlessly trying to ensure that they stand out from the crowd of fierce competitors. Sometimes, small enterprises do everything in their power to stay afloat, but a disaster strikes, and all their efforts suddenly go to waste.

It may be hard to imagine such a devastating scenario at first. Still, one cyber-attack, a powerful hurricane, or even a flash flood may be enough to prevent your upcoming startup from being able to operate.

Even worse, grim statistics prove that up to 40% of small enterprises that suffer a sudden disaster never reopen, and nearly all of those that aren’t ready to reopen five days after the catastrophe close their doors forever within just a year.

Fortunately, you don’t have to sit around worrying and waiting for the worst to happen. Every enterprise can create their own business continuity management system strategy to minimize the damage.

Here’s what you can do to prevent your business from going under after experiencing a crisis:

Determine Risks and Potential Threats

The first step to developing a disaster recovery plan for your small business is identifying all the risks and potential threats that may affect your company. You will want to compile a list of all the things that may potentially happen to you, your employees, and your premises.

At the same time, creating a list documenting the events that have already happened to other companies in your industry would be wise. This way, you will have a rundown of some of the most common and possible scenarios you should be ready for.

Numerous threats can affect your firm and prevent it from operating, so you need to look at each of them in detail. When preparing your list, you will need to consider things such as the structure of your business, whether your employees work remotely or come to the office every day, the communication systems you rely upon in daily operations, your IT infrastructure, and any delivery services your enterprise uses.

Check Your Insurance

Not all business insurance policies are created equal. However, all companies need them. Consequently, you should take a closer look at your current insurance policy and review it carefully. This way, you will be able to ensure that you’re insured against potential natural disasters that may strike in the area where your enterprise is located.

Remember that your insurance should be enough to cover potential expenses caused by disruptions to your organization, including ensuring the continuity of your day-to-day operations and paying for the costs of physical damages, e.g., flooding.

If your current insurance policy is insufficient, you don’t have to change your provider. Most insurance companies allow business owners to purchase additional insurance to protect their agencies against the specific disasters that might hit their area.

For instance, if your offices are located in the Tornado Alley area, you should have an option to insure your business against damages that a tornado may cause. Some insurance providers may also allow you to purchase insurance for damages suffered by your key suppliers, especially if your business could not continue running normally without their products or services.

Backup Records and Data

When running a business, you can never have enough backups. If you’re serious about preparing your disaster recovery plan, you should ensure that you have up-to-date duplicates of all vital records and documents.

You can store your data in a solid, watertight safety box, especially if most of your records are printed on paper. Still, making digital copies and keeping them safely in the cloud is also a good practice.

If backing up your records and data sounds overwhelming, you can consider alternative solutions, such as dedicated disaster recovery software. Not only will it keep your data safe from natural disasters, but it will also protect you from hackers, malware, or faulty hardware.

Look for software that fits your budget and provides regular, continuous backups. It should also allow quick data restoration — both onsite and in the cloud.

Set Recovery Objectives

It’s always good to have clear recovery objectives. Because of that, your small business needs to establish what its recovery goals are.

In this step, you should focus on answering questions regarding how quickly you want to be able to operate again after the disaster strikes. You also need to consider inevitable losses and determine the inventory, downtime, and data you can afford to lose if anything happens.

The two essential components you need to determine are:

• Recovery Time Objective (RTO): This term refers to the maximum time your business can be offline.
• Recovery Point Objective (RPO): RPO determines how much data you can afford to lose before your business suffers significant financial losses.

If you don’t have any specific numbers in mind, don’t worry. You can always consult with experts, ask other entrepreneurs in your industry, or do your own research online.

Test Your Plan

Last but not least, you should have a strategy to test your disaster recovery plan. This way, you will be able to ensure that all of its parts work well not only on paper but also in practice.

You cannot allow your recovery measures to fail when you need them the most. If a disaster strikes and your plan turns out inefficient, the effects of the unexpected event may be even worse than initially expected.

The type of testing depends on your needs and preferences, but the options involve:

• Paper testing: Here, you should have a disaster recovery expert go through your plan, review it and annotate it on paper.
• Walkthrough testing: This option involves introducing your team to the plan and asking them for feedback.
• Simulation testing: You can also simulate a disaster that’s most likely to hit your business and follow the steps included in your plan.

In Conclusion

As you can see, a disaster hitting a small business doesn’t necessarily equal a complete loss of control and inability to recover. Proper disaster recovery plans can help you prepare for and insure against potential threats. If you think your company is particularly vulnerable to disaster, you might even consider hiring a disaster recovery expert.

Investing your time and money in a potential threat that may never happen in real life may seem pointless, but every minute you spend getting ready for disruption is the time you’ll save when problems occur.