Larger organizations will have spent time and money to create plans which will ensure that their firm can withstand acts of fate or malice that harm an organization. This could be burst pipes, earthquake or hurricane – anything that can stop or hinder an organizations from operating. We all need resources to do the work we do: people, equipment, vehicles or buildings. Disaster planning is just taking the time to think about what could go wrong and then what can we do to mitigate these circumstances.
An extremely common and vital resource that we use are computers, or more specifically the information that we hold on them. At the very least we may have a list of our clients and their contact details. More information may be held, for example what actions we have undertaken with them. What would happen if this data is lost? This is a simple thing to happen: a hard drive having worked well for 7 years (we don’t often get up to date kit in the not-for-profit sector) has come to the end of its life and dies; a flood destroys our equipment; a computer is stolen. How many of us back-up our data. Unfortunately there are some organizations, especially the smaller ones who do not think of this as a priority.
Nowadays mobile memory devices are cheap and the regular copying of our information is not an onerous process. It does not require specialist software for most small organizations and there are ways of protecting this data from prying eyes. It is a small effort that can save a great deal of pain in trying to replace lost information. At least you will have one disaster covered.
