Have a Plan for Any Disaster

All businesses know the negative effects of network downtime, especially downtime that’s unforeseen and unprepared for. Disasters can range in severity and frequency, but they all have an impact on your business. Gartner reports that an astonishing 43% of SMBs go out of business right after experiencing major data loss. And 51% permanently close their doors within two years. Only a mere 6% of companies survive.

But companies oftentimes don’t put disaster plans in place because they aren’t in hurricane or tornado territory, or they believe something like that is so rare it probably won’t affect them. But these major natural disasters aren’t the only reason to take effective measures to help protect your business.

Business owners often fail to plan for the smaller, more frequent disasters that are likely to strike. Thunderstorms, power outages, equipment failure or even human error can all cause network outages for a business—just as severe as those caused by natural disasters. This can mean the inability to place orders, receive payments, do inventory reports, etc. for an extended period of time.

Before you are faced with any type of disaster situation, it’s necessary to develop and implement a business continuity plan. Given that most companies today rely on network connectivity in nearly every aspect of their business, thinking about – and planning – a network business continuity plan should be a fundamental piece of your overall management strategy.