Disaster Backup Plan for Businesses
Businesses that have disaster backup plans, also referred to as business continuity plans, avoid losing pertinent customer and company records. Disaster plans also help save the lives of employees who work at organizations that experience natural and/or human made business interruptions like fires and floods. Producing the plans in-house saves companies money. However, there are organizations that create business continuity plans for external clients.
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Identify Critical Business Components
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Business leaders should identify critical business operations. These are operations or functions that can cause the entire business to suffer financially if they are not able to function normally. Write steps to keep these functions operating on business continuity plans. For example, a customer service firm could establish alternate telephone numbers to use should its normal business lines get disrupted.
Identify Critical Personnel
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List the names, titles and contact information of all critical personnel in each department at the organization in business plans. The chief executive officer or most senior leaders at the organization should have the names, titles and contact information of all employees they supervise or manage. They can obtain this information from their human resource managers. Home addresses, emergency telephone numbers and email addresses are key components of the contact information. It is also important that critical personnel know their role in the event of an emergency or business interruption. Organizations should also consider acquiring the services of an electronic notification service so they can contact all employees within their organization in a matter of moments. Companies that choose to contact their employees manually can create call trees that list each employee in a department's name, address and telephone number and the order each employee is contacted in. Critical employees are contacted prior to less critical workers.
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Backup Electronic and Paper Records
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Backup electronic files nightly; this includes customer account information. Scan and store paper documents in electronic format. Additionally, placing passwords on documents and records that contain private and confidential information keeps pertinent data from entering the wrong hands.
Create Alternate Work Locations
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Identify alternate work locations for critical employees and remaining staff members. Many organizations can allow employees to sign into work from home using laptops and desktop computers. If this option is selected, organizations should ensure that laptops and desktop computers are encrypted with passwords and have virus, identity theft and spyware protection software on their hard drives. When critical employees need to physically come into a workspace, companies should secure alternate work locations through external companies like Sungard. Have technology personnel test servers and computers at alternate work locations regularly to ensure that critical files are easy to retrieve.
Test Plans
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After business continuity plans are created organizations should test them. Conduct emergency evacuation tests to examine how well employees know how to leave their work spaces and meet at assigned locations so they are accounted for during fire drills and other evacuation tests. Also test emergency call trees so employees know how to respond to emergency notifications.
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References
- Photo Credit Emergency image by JASON WINTER from Fotolia.com
