Increase the effectiveness of your recovery plan by teaching all of your employees what to do before and after a disaster

By Lawrie Ackerman, E.E., C.D.R.P.

No matter how thorough you think your company's disaster recovery plan might be, it's most likely missing one key ingredient: your people. A company's employees can greatly reduce the impact of a loss by knowing what immediate actions to take in the event of a loss incident. There are many simple things they can do to help safeguard your important assets. Also, it stands to reason that even the most meticulous contingency plan is useless if your staff doesnt know how to implement it. If your plan doesnt take these issues into account, you may as well throw it in your shredder.

An Ounce of Prevention

A few simple precautionary moves can save a lot of time, money and grief should an unfortunate business loss occur. Below are just a few examples of actions your personnel should take immediately to help ease the detrimental effects of a loss incident.

Lift Up Electronics

Surge protection strips and uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems are valuable tools because they can keep your computers from being damaged by a power surge. However, even veteran IT personnel commonly place these items directly on the floor next to their desks, right alongside their tower PCs. In the event of a disaster, these items risk being soaked by water from a flood, or from the fire-fighting effort after a blaze. Simply moving your power protection devices and towers a few inches off the floor to your desktop or onto a stand greatly decreases the risk of moisture coursing through these sensitive electronics.

Safeguard Back-up Data

Employees all too often load crucial data onto tapes or other media, then place the tapes near their computer, or even leave them in their backup drive. If a fire consumed the computer, the back-up media would go up in flames right along with it. Storing the media in fireproof cabinets or safes won't cut it; because those receptacles aren't heatproof, the high temperatures of a fire may melt the tapes or disks into a useless mess, or at least destroy data. Consider moving the media to an offsite storage location, such as a nearby office or safe deposit box. Also, there are many reliable services that, for a fee, will rent server space for companies so that you can easily upload backed up data and retrieve it whenever needed.

A Pound of Cure

When I was still in pigtails, a fireman visited my grade-school class and told us what to do in case of a house fire. He taught us how to 'stop, drop and roll,' how to plan an exit route, and to stay out of the burned house until a fireman said it was safe. By the same token, teaching your staff how to react during and after a catastrophe can be a lifesaver.

Hands Off Equipment

You'd be surprised how often employees find a computer that has been soaked by flood water or covered with soot from a fire, then are seized by the impulse to flip the power switch to see if it's working. Turning on a water-filled or soot-covered piece of equipment, might not only short out and destroy the equipment; it could also deliver a serious electrical shock. To protect your equipment from further damage after an incident, and to prevent your workers from serious injury, educate your staff to keep their hands off at-risk equipment until recovery experts give them the go-ahead.

Electrical Utility

Several years ago, a factory was under several feet of water.  The expensive equipment began to short out.  It was necessary to cut the power to the building immediately to preserve the company's assets as well as eliminate the possibility of electrocuting someone. To reach the main breaker panel, an employee would have needed to wade through waist-high water that might have been energized. The only alternative was to throw the main switch outside the building. Unfortunately, no one had the key to the padlocked main switch (which was only a few feet above the water level on a power utility pole).  No one knew how to get their hands on the key. As a result, employee safety was compromised, and thousands of dollars worth of machinery, computers and phone equipment were lost to short-circuiting. A little knowledge would have saved the day.

About the Author
Lawrie Ackerman, electrical engineer, is President of Asset Recovery Technologies, Inc., an engineering firm specializing in evaluation and restoration of electrical, mechanical and electronic equipment.  For more information, please call (800) 805-0644 and request the “Knowledge is Power” InfoFax.