The Earthquake Has Passed – How Do You Prepare For The Day...

The Earthquake Has Passed – How Do You Prepare For The Day After?

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Natural disasters may cause loss of information existing in the computer systems, leading to businesses and infrastructure collapsing. Proper planning for recovery after natural damages can aid businesses and systems to survive, even in the worst situations.

The computer is made of sensitive and delicate parts, vulnerable to damages caused by nature. Hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, even war or a terror attack can cause not only death and destruction, but the loss of valuable irrecoverable information. For most modern businesses these days, information and data are the essence of the business and losing them could end them completely. For exactly this reason, when a company plans a strategy for disaster recovery, it must include not only fire extinguishers and other protective measures, but also an IT infrastructure plan.

There’s no place on earth impervious to natural or hand-made disasters. That’s why it’s vital for any business around the world to prepare for disasters, according to the area the business is set in. For example, the greatest threat in the Silicon Valley area is earthquakes while the San Francisco bay area is more exposed to floods.

Knowing the dangers a business is up against should affect the that business plans its data centers. So in an area exposed to earthquakes or tzunami waves, it’s better not to build the data center on the coast below sea level, no matter how great the view is. The planners of the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan learned this the hard way, after giant tzunami waves hit the generators meant to cool the nuclear reactors with such great force that it caused a meltdown.

It’s impossible to protect everyone and everything during a disaster, but proper preperations for such events could preserve the business should the worst case scenario actually happens. It’s important to protect critical elements of the business, such as client lists or important financial files. These are the sort of things where outside backup is recommended. It’s also important to understand the risk a certain area is in, for instance – most people in North America aren’t in danger of war inside the borders, unlike the residents of the Middle East.

Furthermore, it’s just as important to prepare back-ups and make sure that they’re undamaged as it is exercizing fire drills. It’s also important to keep the back-ups external to the site, so they won’t be damaged during the disaster, along with other devices in the company. Cloud storage services, such as Dropbox, could be used for exactly this purpose.

In conclusion: The world is full of dangers, but preparing for them could allow continuance of work even after an earthquake, hurricane or just spilling a coffee cup on your laptop this morning.

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