Backups - Will Your Business Survive a Natural Disaster

This article in the Washington Post makes it clear that even if you do make backups - they won’t do much good if they are not secure. And secure does not just mean off-site.

Others who thought they had made adequate precautions found that the magnitude of Katrina overwhelmed even the best planning.

Jacqueline Mae Goldberg, a personal injury lawyer who practiced in New Orleans, said she created backup files and stored them at her home. In an e-mail she said both places were wrecked by the storm.

If your accounting system disappeared would your business follow suit? If your client list was obliterated would you be able to conduct any business?

“We’ve had a number of calls from companies in utter chaos,” said Mike Sullivan, a senior vice president of VeriCenter Inc., a Texas firm that does data storage and backup. “They’re at risk of losing their business, especially small and mid-sized companies.”

The extent of such damage will take time to assess. Those businesses that did have backup and emergency plans sometimes found that it not only protected their data, but also kept them operating throughout the hurricane and its aftermath.

Besides making a local backup to CD, we backup our data off-site every day over the internet on a virtual private network. As I read this article I had twangs imagining what it would take to get our system back up and running again if something should happen.

Hat-Tip to Kevin Devin on the necessity of way-off-site backups