GRAND RAPIDS ? What do you do when the worst happens to your computer system? When a fire destroys your equipment, or a hacker demolishes your software? If you?re the typical small business, you probably don?t have any disaster recovery plan. That?s a big mistake, security experts say.
?Disaster Recovery is big for small businesses because most small businesses don?t think about it or do a backup of their systems,?? says Adam Schrock, CISSP, Chief Security Officer for Secure Crossing in Ferndale. ?That?s the biggest thing you can do ? back up all your data and make sure you store the back up off site.?
Schrock recommends Veritas software as a good and inexpensive backup package for small businesses. Veritas also is used by 99 percent of the Fortune 500. If you run your own back up, he suggests using a CD and storing the CD in a fireproof box. Small tape drives work well too. Just make sure the tape isn?t stored where the computer system is located.
If you decide to take the hardware back up route for Data Recovery, smaller is better, says James Georgis, CISSP, Regional Pre Sales Director
Great Lakes Region, for Computer Associates. When your computer system goes down, you want to get it back up as soon as possible. If you?re using a big expensive computer that you can?t buy down the street at your local CDW store, your chances of getting back to business as usual are much less. He recommends a simple Intel-chip based computer like you can buy from Dell, Gateway and Hewlett-Packard.
?The thought processes are take the box that is the most bullet-proof and make that your central file server,?? he said. ?If you have a fire, a hard drive failure, the lead time for parts isn?t weeks like you get with big gear.?
Computer Associates sells a low cost security management suite that includes anti virus and anti spamware software. Within the suite is a security information tool that provides a snap shot of what?s going on in your computer environment. It displays the status of firewalls, of anti virus software, of the data recovery system. Pricing starts is as low as $30 a month per work station.
So you have the software and hardware in place. But do you have a documented recovery plan? Raj Patel, Manger of the Technology Consultants and Solutions Practice at Plante & Moran in Southfield, said a plan is a must. The plan should include a team roster of everyone involved in its implementation. It should spell out specific steps that must be taken to recover the technology, like how to configure the server. It should specify which tapes should be uploaded first. And above all, test your disaster recovery plan to make sure the tapes save the right data and you can recover it.
If you have a security consultant create your disaster recovery plan, make sure that plan specifies the maximum downtown allowable. Go through each of your key systems and ask, ?How much I can afford to be down,? and then evaluate your current capability to recover.
?If you can?t afford to be down for more than four fours, but your current disaster recovery plan takes four days to recover, you have a gap of three-and-a-half days,?? Patel says. ?You need to bridge that gap. Disaster insurance normally doesn?t recover all costs associated with the recovery. So it is important to have a good disaster recovery plan based on the maximum recoverable downtown.?
For very small businesses, the best disaster recovery plan may be paper, said Nan Polious, Director of Walsh College?s Information Assurance Center, a federally sanctioned security training program. Paper checks and ledgers, back up checks that can be written out by hand, hand-written invoices may be the least expensive way to get your business back up after a disaster, man made or otherwise.
For other businesses, the answer could be a 200 gigabyte hard drive that plugs into a computer?s USB port. Symantec’s Norton Ghost provides advanced backup and recovery for your PC. It also protects your data by making a backup of your entire hard drive’s contents.
Your disaster recovery plan also should include a back up CD or DVD of your QuickBooks accounting software program. This CD should be stored in a fireproof box, or bank safety deposit box.
Another very important program that needs back up is your contact list, like those found in Microsoft Outlook, a common PC email, contact and calendaring software. If you don?t back it up digitally, you could simply print it out, Polious said. If you lose a contact list that you?ve been building for years, that too would be a disaster.
Mike Brennan is Editor & Publisher of Mitechnews.Com, a technology and entrepreneurial web portal for Michigan and the Midwest. To view this site, paste www.mitechnews.com in your browser address bar.
