What to Do When Disaster Strikes? 10 Tips That Can Help

Step One: Evaluate the Disaster

The first step of any disaster recovery plan is to stay calm and evaluate the disaster before enacting your business continuity plan.  The type and severity of disaster you encounter will determine which actions you must take. For example, if the disaster is a danger to the building then you must first evacuate employees to safe meeting zones. However, if there is a weather or environmental related event then evacuating the building may not be a good idea.

If the event is not a risk to any employees and the business impact is acceptable, the priority would be to resolve the issue to resume business operations.  But for disasters that are threat to your data center here are a few tips to consider.

Step Two: What to do when disaster strikes

1. Follow your company evacuation plans to make sure everyone is out of the facility and safe.

1. Once at the designated evacuation meeting points, perform a head count of your employees and verify no one is left behind.

1. Inform local officials of your employee head count and status of the building.

1. If the disaster is likely to cause significant damage to the data center begin implementing IT failover and recovery plans.

1. Contact recovery vendors. If you don’t have a hot site then you may need to have archived tape delivered which could take 24 hours.

1. Head to the co-location, disaster recovery, or hot site to begin restoration of business critical applications.

1. Communicate. Notify executives and employees of the plans and length of time it may take to recover.

1. Begin restoration of those services that are required to resume business operations to a functional level.

1. Return to the corporate office to evaluate data center damage once backup systems are operational and emergency officials have deemed it is safe and acceptable to do so.

1. Verify your insurance coverage, determine what damaged hardware, software and or infrastructure that may need to be replaced and compile a full list. The insurance company will want to see this as well as the replacement cost.

No one wants to encounter a disaster, but being prepared will make the recovery significantly easier.