Southeast Computer Solutions

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Hurricane Season 2010: Are you in the Cone of Uncertainty? What business owners should know as we enter the 2010 South Florida Hurricane Season By Ralph CeccarelliMiami, FL - September 2010 Merriam-Webster ’s Dictionary defines Disaster Recovery as "the planning and implementation of procedures and facilities for use when essential systems are not available for a period long enough to have a significant impact on the business" For most of us here in South Florida, that means …hurricane season! And the ubiquitous questions like "How can I protect my business and what do I need to do now to keep us afloat immediately following a natural or man-made disaster?" begin to arise. The answers, regardless of what advice you can garner from TV news, do not involve buying candles and bottled water. Today, in the high-speed age of Information Technology, when it comes to protecting your business, your data is definitely one of your most important assets. And as a business owner, protecting it is one of the most important decisions you can make. In fact, according to Iron Mountain, the global leader in data protection and information management, "It is estimated that 60% of businesses that experience downtime of 48 hours or more will be out of business within three years." In addition to avoiding downtime or a delay of any kind, it is also increasingly important to protect your electronic data from getting in the wrong hands. These days, most businesses are in possession of extremely sensitive data, including credit card numbers, social security numbers, financial data, etc. And often times this data is loosely guarded or on portable devices, such as laptops or PDA ’s. Therefore, any disaster recovery plan that protects your data in case of a natural disaster, should also take into consideration theft and data encryption. The big question is, where to start? The truth is that disaster recovery comes in many forms and at many different price points. There are nearly limitless options and virtually any one could be the right fit for you. It ’s important to perform a risk analysis and establish preventative measures before you need to implement them. For example, in a hurricane, if your roof is torn off and your server is destroyed, how quickly can you resume operations? Can a disgruntled employee download your customer database onto a flash drive and walk out the door? All your risks from the small to the large, the more common to the least unlikely need to be addressed. Then you need to practice. Perform routine preventative measures or fire drills so that the IT staff knows exactly what to do and how long you might anticipate down time. Then you ’ll be able to put disaster recovery measures in place and be able to evaluate those measures when you perform a post-mortem analysis. Some additional food for thought includes installing data encryption software If sensitive data resides on portable devices or find applications with sophisticated security that disables the ability to download data. If most of your critical data resides on a server, then the most basic disaster recovery plan includes a routine, formalized tape backup procedure.

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