#1  PREVENT DISASTER

Earthquake

1. This is the hardest disaster to plan for and the most expensive. To prevent it, don’t work in an earthquake prone area. Odds are you won’t have the budget to “harden” your office like many data centers in earthquake prone regions.
2. Make sure that off site /online backups are in another state, several states from your home state.
3. If possible, run as much of the business as possible through cloud based services and applications that servers in safe regions of the country. This can mitigate a substantial amount of risk to the IT infrastructure and operational up time.

Fire

1. Have fire extinguishers checked and charged annually as needed.
2. Make sure that your have proper fire suppression systems in your server room. (Water is obviously not ideal, as are most common fire extinguishers)
3. If you carry a lot of inventory, consult a professional on the best plan of action

Flood

1. Make sure that no computers sit directly on the floor. At least 1’ high is recommended.
2. Server rooms should not have any overhead water pipes
3. Make sure that your office is on upper floors and/or on high ground (One of our former clients had a Vespa shop in Atlanta that was located in a shopping center that was at the bottom of a fairly steep hill and it had a river on it’s back side. When hurricane Ivan came through, the store was submerged in 5’ of water, submerging their entire network and inventory).

Tornado

1. Avoid locating sever rooms near the exterior wall of a building. Put them as close to the center as possible in whatever room as the most reinforced infrastructure (and no water pipes over head, see Flood above)

Physical Theft

1. Consult with a security company regarding ingress/egress control options such as card or biometric (thumb prints, hand scans, etc.) entry
2. Install digital video cameras. Be sure to secure the recording unit in a secret location and back it up off site (online backup is fine)

Data Theft

1. Consult with your managed IT service provider on how to safe guard your data using file permissions, encryption (especially for laptops) and auditing.
2. Disable users’ ability to write to external media such as burnable CDs, DVDs, and Flash Drives.
3. Implement 2-factor authentication (e.g. logging in with a password and thumb print)

Insurance

1. Review your commercial policy with your agent no less than once per year.
2. Make sure that you are protected from all reasonable scenarios and that your limits are adjusted as your revenue/profit increases.