Hurricanes, earthquakes, blizzards, ice storms, mud slides and earthquakes can really ruin you business. Natural disasters are usually non-preventable external occurrences and they are often catastrophic, especially for people who live in or near the epicentre. It is important to get you business fully proofed against such incidence. Disaster-proofing your business should be a quite affordable thing to do. First of all, you need to check the location of your important documents. If document is swept away by flood and hurricane, it would be time consuming and expensive to replace them. This is a task that you shouldn’t do, as you are working hard to recover your business. Although there are no places that are completely secure, you should choose the most secure location. A waterproofed, fireproofed, tough safe that is heavy and properly anchored could be your best investment to ensure that your documents are safe, no matter what. Digital information is often your most important assets in this modern era. This is particularly true if you have terabytes of database information that is updated real time. There should be daily or weekly backup routines. You may need to send the backup to multiple cloud locations, so even if your in-house data center is smashed by tornado, your information will still be relatively intact in remote locations. If you lost your data permanently, your business can be dead in the water. You may rebuild your office and factory, but recovering terabytes of data that are lost permanently will be impossible to do.
The next thing to do is to classify your most important information. There could be a few gigabytes of data that is essential for the inner working of your company, such as username, password, bank accounts, digital versions of documents and others. You need to back them up in DVD, USB flash drive, external hard drive and other storage media. These storage platforms should be distributed in different areas, so not all of them will be affected by natural disasters. You need to outline likely office procedures that can be implemented when disaster strikes. Any task should be delegated properly. There should be warning from the local authority when disaster is about to strike. This is applicable for disasters like hurricanes, floods and blizzards. If your workplace is potentially threatened, all employees should be directed towards minimizing the potential effects of disasters. Vulnerable electronics may need to be placed to safer places or evacuated completely to other locations. You need to monitor the potential occurrence of disaster and perform all the necessary actions. You should make sure that all insurance documents are in secure place and your insurers will agree to cover the potential losses. When the disaster finally strikes, you should go to your office and manufacturing facilities when it is perfectly safe. Use good digital camera to take photographs and record videos, so damages to your business property can be documented immediately. This should be a good time to assess the damage and make quick plan on how to immediately regain full business operations.