“IT was the one thing that went well when a lot of things were going wrong.” – Andrew Kromer
When frozen pipes burst in the attic above his office, Andrew Kromer’s CPA business was flooded on Christmas Day, causing a cascade of events that rendered the office building unusable and left the tenants scrambling to keep their businesses afloat. However, Kromer was up and running within a few days and was able to continue serving clients with minimal disruption – thanks in large part to the preparation he did ahead of time.
Proper planning
Kromer credits proper planning, good insurance, and our team at Proactive IT for his ability to survive the disaster. According to Andrew,” IT was the one thing that went right when a lot of other things were going wrong.”
Helping clients plan for disruption is a big part of what we do at Proactive IT. We help business owners evaluate the risks they face and create a recovery plan. This involves considering all possible disaster scenarios, helping determine their risk tolerance, and then developing a plan that meets the client’s specific needs.
When you get down to it, disaster planning starts with thinking through your risk tolerance. How much down time and data loss can you afford?
Of course, everyone wants to recover immediately with zero data loss. But this strategy can get expensive for a small business. We help our clients find a balance between budget and risk tolerance and build a solution around those points.
Proactive’s approach to planning for disruption involves discussions around two primary factors:
- Recovery Time – How long can you afford to be down? How long will it take to get up and running in a worst case scenario?
- Recovery Point – How much data can you afford to lose?
You may be able to afford to lose time, but may not be able to afford losing data. Data is one thing that can’t be recovered once it is permanently gone.
There is no such thing as a one-size-fit’s all disaster recovery plan. A plan for recovery will look a little different from each business and will most likely involve solutions like data backup and cloud storage.
Planning for disruption is not set it and forget it. As Andrew shared, “Planning for disruption takes discipline.”
From an IT perspective, that discipline includes critical steps like:
- Keeping your system documentation up-to-date
- Having a clear backup and disaster recovery plan that meets your specific business needs
- Testing the backups to ensure they are working
- Ensuring that your backup solution is hardened against cyber attacks and natural disasters
- Planning for a phone system disruption
- Keeping current on your insurance
Regardless of what your plan for disruption entails, the bottom line is that your IT provider should help you prepare – and then they should be available to help you execute your response plan if disaster strikes. When you plan for the unexpected, and have a trusted IT provider to execute that plan successfully, then your business will have the best chance of survival in a worst-case scenario.
Proactive helps their clients plan for and recover from disruption. Reach out to us if you have not yet starting planning for disruption, we can help start the conversation about risk tolerance and create a plan for disruption specifically for your business.
Dedicated to IT security and productivity,
– Steve
About Steve Kennen
Steve Kennen is the President of Proactive IT and an expert in information technology infrastructure management, cybersecurity, and cyber risk management practices for businesses. A seasoned entrepreneur and technology veteran with over 25 years of experience, Steve leads the team that keeps our clients secure and their business operations running smoothly.