Assessing your risk
INTRODUCTION
A disaster can strike any organisation, large or small. It can arrive in the shape of storm, flood, fire, a terrorist bomb, action by pressure groups, or product contamination.
Around half of all businesses experiencing a disaster with no effective plans for recovery fail within the following 12 months.
A basic plan is essential and the scale of this plan will be related to the size of your business. There is no universal solution. However all organisations, big and small, will need to go through the same basic process to produce a plan.
The biggest threats to most organisations are from fire, theft, fraud or vandalism. Serious storms, floods or water escape from other sources can also be a major risk, especially if premises are in low-lying land near a river and important equipment, machinery or computers are sited on the lower floors. Some business's are at risk from terrorists or pressure groups because of their products or because of their links with certain overseas countries.
Assessment of your present position
Before making any plan it is sensible to review your loss prevention measures to asses if you can make any improvements. Loss prevention areas to consider:
Define and identify
- functions and information critical or irreplaceable to the continuity of your business e.g. information on computer systems such as customer details, current order book information, supplier information, staff information, specialist tools and stock, manufacturing drawings, legal documents and so on.
- essential equipment requirements, such as PCs, desks, telephones and copiers.
- minimum staff needed to maintain a service to your customers whilst recovery from disaster is under way.
- the length of time you can afford for recovery to take place as this will shape your recovery plan, determining, for example, whether or not relocation of part or all of your facilities is needed.