You’ve probably heard the business phrase, “Pray for the best and prepare for the worst.”
Although you hope it doesn’t occur, a disaster could be lurking around the corner any minute.
Whether it’s a natural disaster or a data security breach, it’s vital that your company has a detailed plan in place just in case.
But what should a disaster recovery and emergency response plan entail?
This guide is for you.
What Is a Disaster Recovery and Emergency Response Plan?
Each business has its own unique vulnerabilities and exposures. Awareness of your specific threats and their intrinsic threat levels is a vital way you can protect both your employees and the business itself.
You can’t prevent a hurricane from striking. But you can take steps to mitigate the impact a hurricane could potentially have on business operations. According to the Small Business Administration, 25% of businesses won’t open again following a disaster. Here, having a detailed disaster recovery and emergency response plan in place could help you avoid that fate.
Benefits of having a plan include:
Cost-savings – A disaster recovery plan will include both preventative measures and corrective measures that help eliminate or reduce many of the potential costs associated with any given disaster.
Minimize recovery time – Business continuity is the underlying goal of any disaster response plan. Having guidelines that your organization can lean on will help minimize recovery times and prevent additional delays. According to the Disaster Recovery Preparedness Bench Mark Survey, the costs of outages added up to more than an average of $50,000, with larger companies citing losses up to $5 million.
Avoid legal liability – While the disaster itself may be out of your hands, your actions leading up to it and in response are not. Failure to have a plan in place that helps prevent it from occurring in the first place or, at least, mitigates the fallout could be an important way you protect your business from legal liability.
Prevent poor decision-making – When the sky is falling, it becomes far more challenging to maintain a level head. Armed with a plan, you have a framework to follow that can ensure that you avoid making hasty, ill-conceived decisions.
Crafting a Disaster Recovery and Emergency Response Plan
So, how do you prepare for and plan for the worst? As a business, we’ve been deeply involved with disaster recovery and emergency response planning and execution, spanning an array of incidents. To fully prepare, we suggest you take the following steps:
Perform an internal assessment of your risk – Identify the emergency risks your business is most likely to face; this could be anything from natural disasters, to man-made emergencies, to technology related issues.
Create a disaster recovery team – Involve key members at various levels of your organization who will be charged with developing, implementing, and maintaining a disaster recovery plan. And should a disaster strike, these will be the players leading the response efforts.
Create a plan – A disaster recovery plan functions as an “if then” scenario. For example, if a hurricane strikes, then the business will take the following steps. Each potential emergency needs its own custom response plan. After that, your organization must practice the responses so it’s fully prepared when the time comes.
Implement preventative measures – Different emergencies will require varying responses. For instance, a fire-suppression system can help prevent an office conflagration, whereas a backup data center can help with data retrieval and restoration.
MFS Construction—Disaster Recovery Experts
It’s better to have an emergency plan in place and not need it, than to need one and not have it. If you wait until the disaster has already occurred, then it’s likely already too late.
So, how can you prevent that?
MFS Construction can help. Our construction team is ready for full deployment when a natural disaster or emergency response is necessary. Or, if you simply need help with pre-planning and preventative maintenance, we can do that too.
Interested in learning more? Contact us today!
Sources:
Small Business Administration. Prepare for emergencies. https://www.sba.gov/business-guide/manage-your-business/prepare-emergencies
DRP Benchmark.Disaster Recovery Preparedness Benchmark Survey. https://www.unitrends.com/wp-content/uploads/ANNUAL_REPORT-DRPBenchmark_Survey_Results_2014_report.pdf