Three Keys To Protecting Your Data Against Disaster

Figure out your needs. This means sitting down with everyone who plays a key role in your company's daily operations -- not just the IT staff. Review what data needs protecting; how often that data should be backed up and updated; and who needs access to it if your company needs to shut down or to operate from an alternate location. A brainstorming session may seem like a waste of time, especially if your IT staff normally handles these questions. But it adds a vital measure of real-world context to the planning process.

Design and execute an off-site backup strategy. How you handle this depends on a number of factors, including the size of your business and whether or not you have a dedicated IT staff. Whether you back up to hard drives, tape, cloud-based services, or simply an employee laptop, ensure that the data you need gets backed up and moved off-site on a workable schedule. If those backups are sitting in your office basement when the water rises, then you really haven't protected your data at all.

Start with Plan A -- then work on Plans B and C. This may be the most important point raised in the article I mention above. No matter how carefully you plan, Murphy's Law is lurking just around the corner. Look hard at the variables in your disaster-planning scenario: What could go wrong to throw a monkey wrench into your primary plan? Once you take that step, it's possible to think about an alternative plan -- or perhaps a couple of them -- that make it easier to expect the unexpected.