One of the most unfortunate lessons that business owners learn is that disasters happen whether you’re ready for them or not. The problem is that many small- to medium-sized business owners especially don’t plan for disaster recovery because it’s such an uncomfortable topic. They don’t want to believe anything could happen to prevent their business from growing.
Sticking your head in the sand about this is not going to help you, though. So, you need to be able to plan in advance for all eventualities to prevent failure if the unthinkable happens, such as a cyberattack. If you don’t think things through in your business, that’s the ultimate disaster. Unsure whether your business will survive a disaster? Here are the signs.
Internal IT Disaster
When you hear disasters, you think tornadoes. Not all disasters are natural disasters. In fact, IT disaster recovery is something to look into as a matter of urgency for your business. The most likely disruption to your business doesn’t come from the sky or from fire, but it comes from inside your business.
Cybercrime, terrorism and other civil defense events actually make up over 10% of disaster recovery incidents. Cyber crime is on the rise and it’s becoming a relevant threat, especially if you are a small or medium business.
Untested Disaster Recovery Plan
You haven’t tested your full disaster recovery plan. Having a disaster recovery plan is a good first step, but it needs regularly testing to ensure it works in practice.
People in the recovery plan need to understand their roles, for one. And tests can uncover issues like data backups not working as expected. You might find hardware or software incompatibilities between backup systems or production. By putting the plan through testing, you can be confident in the ability to execute a disaster recovery plan at the time of disaster and that it is likely to go as expected. Ideally, the practice runs are successful.
Denial That a Disaster Could Strike
You’re in denial that it could happen to you. No matter how great your business is, anything can happen and will happen, especially if you’re not prepared for it.
It’s comfortable to have your head in the sand because denial is a great way to fool yourself into thinking that something won’t go wrong. However, if you’re not prepared, that’s the first step at failing.
Your Plan is Only to Satisfy Regulations
You only have a plan because it’s regulated and what you’ve put together is the bare minimum. Regulations require a business in a range of industries to have a disaster recovery plan in place.
If you’ve only done something basic because you’re required to have it as a checkbox exercise, that’s a great way to fail. Ensure that you prepare for a disaster even if you’re not planning for one to happen. Nobody plans for a disaster to take place and disasters don’t care about checkboxes.
If you are not prepared for a disaster to happen, that’s a disaster in itself. So, it’s time to buck up and get on board.
Photo by Matthias Groeneveld via Pexels (Canva Free).