There are various methods conducted for doing a drug test to determine the presence of drug and its related substances in a person’s metabolism. Most of the personal materials used for the drug test are urine, blood and hair follicle. Urine and blood that are closely related to the metabolism are the simplest media to analyze the presence of drug substance on a person’s metabolism. The hair follicle test is usually conducted to check on the residue of drug substances that left on the hair.

In simple terms Business Continuity is the process of planning and validating how to survive a disaster or incident that disrupts normal business. It describes how to prepare for, prevent, respond to, recover and restore critical functions and defines how a company will stay in business regardless of the source or scale of disruption – computer virus or crash, employee death or resignation, strike action, fire, flood, severe weather, terrorism, vandalism, robbery, pandemic illness, new legislation, random acts of God…

Why every company needs a Business Continuity Plan

There is evidence that companies without a business continuity plan are far more likely to collapse following an incident than those with a plan in place. This ability to demonstrate forward-thinking can also be very good for your company’s reputation, helping you secure funding or new business. Increasingly business continuity planning is a factor when customers are procuring or commissioning work from new suppliers. Insurance providers are also beginning to ask businesses about plans before agreeing to insure.

Investing in an effective approach to Business Continuity can be very attractive to senior or executive management as it brings numerous benefits to the business:

• Reduced exposure of the business
• Risk management process in place
• More operational resilience as a result of identifying and reducing risks
• Reduce downtime due to the identification of alternative processes and workarounds
• Compliance issues can be identified and better managed
• Compliance with Health & Safety legislation
• Reduced exposure to liability actions
• Improved security
• Better protection of assets
• Improved operational effectiveness as a result of process re-engineering
• Ownership of key processes identified
• Defined and documented recovery processes
• Better record keeping
• Share value protected
• Supply chain resilience
• Reduce insurance premiums
• Competitive edge

The Business Continuity Planning Process

For Business Continuity Planning to be a success the Senior Management Team must buy-in to the process, this means supporting it with funding, resources, effective communication and if needed, training. A small team with wide experience from across the company should be appointed to take responsibility and the team’s coordinator should ideally have project management skills.

Phase 1 – Analysis & Development

The first step is to carry out a Business Impact Analysis and identify the most important aspects of the company’s operations and the likely weak points. It’s well worth doing some research on previous incidents that have happened in similar industries as well as the local area.

Resilience audits should be carried out to check systems and processes for dealing with disruption. These audits will highlight areas for improvement and the action needed.

All key personnel should be identified at this stage and succession plans created for them, key personnel are not necessarily senior managers it can be anyone with unique skills or knowledge.

The temptation to overreact in crisis is common. The result can be counter-productive, disruptive, ineffective, or lead to further problems. Of course the manager wants to be proactive; there are consequences for inaction, or delay. So the dilemma is obvious. Act now and pay the price later. Or don’t act and pay the price immediately.

A Measured Response

Emotions run high in times of crisis and often overrule good judgment. The adrenalin is rushing, the demands are great, and those impacted look to their leadership for solutions. But pause a moment, gather your thoughts and composure, realistically assess the situation and seek the best alternative. It generally helps to contact trusted advisers so that you garner a broader understanding and perspective.

Avoid the Media

The media may call, asking for a statement. Ever wonder why so often executives are unavailable for comment in the midst of a crisis? This is, of course, by design. A company spokesman whose comments do not carry the weight of a senior executive is often used to placate the media, until those in charge can formulate a response.

Frequently, the initial response will be something like: “We’re examining the situation.” Or, “We’re gathering the facts.” It’s a realistic way to “buy time.” And, of course, it’s true.

A Course of Action

Depending on the magnitude and complexity of the crisis, you need formulate a realistic response. Ideally, the organization will have done some pre-planning and considered various catastrophes: whether physical, financial, ethical, health, legal, competitive, etc. Even so a pre-packaged response may be inappropriate or require tailoring. A conservative, but timely intervention is usually best. This is not the time to experiment or play “cowboy.”

The “Best” Response

There may not be an ideal response to a crisis, but if there is, it would probably look something like this:

• A thoughtful, realistic assessment
• A timely, but not reactive (knee jerk) response
• Good communication with all affected parties (stakeholders)
• A well-designed plan with an excellent chance of success
• A plan to achieve containment and limit damage and fallout
• Active, aggressive actions to protect the company’s image and reputation
• Extensive monitoring and follow-through
• Actions to prevent a recurrence.

You may have heard the terms hot, cold and warm recovery, but what do they mean, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of each service?

• Hot Standby

Hot standby is normally available to the users within minutes of a disaster situation. This level of service is achieved by total duplication of the computer systems covered (hardware, software and data). There will also be a requirement for a resilient network connection into the Hot Site.

Benefits – Available immediately; dedicated to (customer).

Disadvantages – Cost; Complexity, management.

• Warm Standby

Warm standby is normally available to the users within hours of a disaster situation. This is by far the most common type of service utilised by for I.T. disaster recovery, and typical recovery times range from 8 hours to 24 hours (dependant on complexity, location and data volumes).

The service can be delivered from a remote recovery centre, or alternatively, delivered to site in the event of a disaster. Depending on the equipment involved the configuration may be installed within an existing facility or a mobile recovery unit.

It should be noted that whilst the Hot standby option is normally dedicated to one customer, Warm standby is delivered on a subscription basis. Industry standards are between ten and twenty five subscribers per configuration. Availability is therefore not guaranteed in the event of a disaster. Testing is also normally to a predefined number of days P.A.

Benefits – Lower cost; reasonable availability.

Disadvantages – Availability; recovery timescales are longer; limited testing available; only available for a limited period following a disaster.

• Cold Standby

Cold standby is the provision of computer and people facilities that are made available to the client within a few hours of the incident. Unless the service is backed up by a contract to supply the necessary computer equipment, the recovery period is likely to be several days. It is not unusual for Warm and Cold standby services to be combined, giving a very flexible approach to recovery.

Fully serviced office space is also available on a subscription basis. These are usually equipped with PCs, servers, printing facility and a network infrastructure. These would be described as Business Recovery Centres, and could also incorporate Cold space for central systems.

Benefits – Lower cost; large amount of available space (can accommodate large systems). Business recovery Centres can accommodate several hundred people.

Disadvantages – Availability; recovery timescales are longer; limited testing available; only available for a limited period following a disaster; additional recovery services needed.

Following a disaster, clearly defined steps/actions need to be taken to enable business continuity. During the first 24 hours these steps will fall into the following categories.

Initial Assessment

Timescales – Immediately (T + 0)

Following a disaster situation the first step that must be taken is to assess the current situation. This will be carried out by the Disaster Co-ordinator, who will decide if the Disaster Management Team needs to be assembled. The team will need access to a Disaster Command Facility, if the primary location is not accessible for any reason. The Disaster Management Team and Command Centre should be detailed, along with relevant phone/mobile numbers and directions in the Business Continuity Plan.

The relevant emergency services should have already been notified of the situation. The Disaster Management Team would act as the main focal point for the emergency services.

It may be necessary to make a pre-invocation call to put the Disaster Recovery service on standby, thereby reducing the response time should the service be formally invoked.

Disaster Management Meeting

Timescales – within 1 hour (T + 1 hour)

If it is necessary to call a formal Disaster meeting, this should happen within 1 hour of the event. It may not be possible to get all members of the team together in these timescales, therefore all essential members should be agreed upon and documented in the plan.

The Disaster Management Team’s main role would be to:

­ Define the problem
­ Define the extent of the disruption
­ Determine the likely impact on your business
­ Estimate outage length (where possible)
­ Invoke Disaster Recovery service if applicable
­ Formally set up Disaster Command centre
­ Agree team’s objectives for next three hours
­ Agree formal verbal report for senior management
­ Agree on staffing levels needed at the present time
­ Send non-essential staff home (if during office hours)
­ Contact non-essential staff at home (if out of hours)
­ Call in additional staff (if out of hours)
­ Set up next meeting for T + 4 hours

Disaster Review Meeting

Timescales – within 2 hours (T + 2 hours)

At this stage you should have a much more detailed understanding of the situation. This will enable a full written report to be produced for senior management.

The Disaster Management Team will have by this time:

­ Invoked the disaster Recover Service (if applicable)
­ Set up a temporary Disaster Command centre
­ Mobilise essential staff members

If applicable the warm standby (Disaster Recovery) services should be available by this time to start configuration of the standby systems.

Configuration of Standby Equipment

Timescales – within 2 hours of invocation (T + 4 hours)

Warm Disaster Recovery configurations are normally scheduled to be available within 2 hours of invocation. By this time the site should be ready to receive the equipment. Power and Communications should be enabled and facilities for the essential staff should be available. Additional equipment needing to be purchased may arrive some time after this. The backup media will also have arrived onsite.

Restoration of Data and Testing

Timescales – within 20 hours of invocation (T + 22 hours)

Up to 8 hours may be required to restore and test the system. Comprehensive user acceptance test (UAT) procedures should be documented in your Disaster Recovery Plan to ensure the systems are fully operational before they are announced to be live to the end user.

Systems available to end users

Timescales – within 22 hours of invocation (T + 24 hours)

At this stage you should be able to resume some (or all) of your business activities (depending on the scope of the disaster). It is critical at this stage to plan for full business restoral. These steps should include:

­ Interim requirement such as larger temporary accommodation
­ Refurbishment of damaged offices (if applicable)
­ Identification of new premises (if applicable)
­ Replacement of damaged equipment

A full Business Resumption plan should also be produced, detailing the transition from the standby facility to permanent offices.

A disaster recovery plan is a detailed plan that is designed to outline how a business will recover from an unexpected event that causes costly losses. By developing an effective plan, businesses can restore the business’s ability to operate by recovering from the initial loss and resuming normal operations. While a business owner hopes that a disaster or catastrophic loss never happens to them, everyone should have a plan in force in case it does. US Department of Labor studies show that virtually 40 percent of all businesses who experience a disaster never re-open. Do not become a part of this statistic and understand the importance of a disaster recovery plan in business environments.

Crises and disasters that can affect your business operations can include theft, fire, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, power failure, Internet failure, hazardous material leaks and spills, security breaches, terrorist attacks, and computer hacker attacks. While the severity of each of these risks will vary, each exposure can close your business doors for good if you do not have an effective and comprehensive recovery and resumption plan in force. While not all of these risks can affect your business, you must plan for each risk you are vulnerable to.

While developing a recovery plan make take a lot of time and effort, once you have developed a successful plan you will ensure the continuity of leadership throughout the organization by relocating or repairing the damage that has been done in a reasonable time frame. You should outline realistic time frames on when facilities, records, assets, records and computer systems should be restored so that you know you are on track for business resumption. While some of the common disasters that occur today are preventable, it is important to develop a plan for every uncertainty.

The three primary goals of all disaster recovery plans that should include reducing the potential for injuries and physical damage to properties and records; stabilizing the effects of the disaster by beginning recovery efforts; and implementing the right procedures depending on the type of disaster that has occurred. While business insurance will pay for damages and loss to the corporation, re-opening your business and resuming operations requires planning. Assign individuals and committees responsible for implementing and following the recovery plan. Also, it is important to be sure that your business is not permanently closed because you failed to plan ahead of time for unexpected losses.

In the web site you will be able to find so many options of company that can provide fax service for your business. You will be capable of finding out many companies with professionalism and capability that can give best service for the customers. Moreover, in the web site you will figure out the features that the companies have for the online fax service. In addition, in the web site you can see the pricing of online fax service and you can compare the prices that a company offers with the others. You can choose the one that gives you more benefits.

Furthermore, the companies or providers of online fax service that you can get in the site are the companies with high rating. It means that the service that they provide for the customers is good that is why there are many people who rely on them and give good rating for the service.

Since the health of a small business depends directly on the health of the owner, I encourage my clients to plan downtime into their working lives to avoid getting worn down by work.

Being practical, taking a summer break will only recharge your batteries if you plan to get the most from your holiday break:

Declare a holiday

Mark your holiday dates in the calendar and prepare just as you do for other work projects: list potential worries, prioritise tasks to complete before departure and plan tasks for your return.

Straighten your admin

Pay important bills to avoid returning to final demands. Send out invoices early to ensure cash flows whilst you are away. De-clutter your office so you make a clean start.

Get your calls forwarded to the voicemail on your mobile and incoming faxes to your email account then pack your laptop and modem for easy access.

Wind down into your holiday

If you employ staff, arrange their holidays in a roster: discuss who will be responsible for during your absence, and how they should deal with important issues so you don’t return to a mountain of post and messages.

Avoid important meetings in the weeks that you leave or return. At least three weeks beforehand, let your customers, suppliers and other key people know your absence dates so they can flex their plans.

Security matters

If your premises are unattended, don’t tell potential burglars: ask callers to leave a message on your voicemail. Secure your premises; store important documents elsewhere; and backup vital information and put the copies in two different locations.

Appoint someone trustworthy to check your answering machine and premises. Leave instructions on how you can be reached in case of an emergency.

Optimise your return

Work stress commonly spoils a good holiday and creates family tensions, so leave your business behind, consciously relax, get the most out of your break and recharge those batteries so that you return refreshed, invigorated and ready for business.

If you follow these simple steps, you will enjoy a well-deserved break from work, you will avoid worrying about the business and you will return ready to work profitably with your customers as they come back from their holidays.

One of the most difficult decisions a business owner can face, is deciding if their businesses worth recovering? To find the true answer to this question it is sometimes worth employing the opinion of an outside agency. This agency will carry out a complete audit and report their finding to you, the good thing about employing an outside agency is they are devoid of emotion towards the business and deal purely with facts and figures.

If the company is deemed recoverable a recovery package can be put in place, generally this comes in the form of a long term loan. Most recovery loans come with stipulations; the reason is to prevent the business failing in the future. Businesses the world over will come across difficult times, for various reasons, the one factor that separates successful businessmen from their peers is lessons are learned by their mistakes and errors of judgement.

Administrators are usually called in for large or PLC’s (Public Limited Company) that find themselves in financial trouble. This normally happens after financial support for the company is withdrawn. News that the Administrators have been called in usually result in the mass ‘sell off’ of company shares; this compounds the problems even more. The Administrators will carry out a complete audit and ascertain if there is anything left of value after all debts are paid. Generally speaking debts are not payable and the company is listed as bankrupt. However on the odd occasion the Administrators will see value in keeping the company afloat, a recovery package is put in place and things have been known to eventually turn around totally.

If you’re a sole proprietor, your plans to protect your human resources probably dovetail easily with your plans to protect your home and family. However, if you have employees, you need a more detailed plan to estimate how long employees will be unable to get to work, what your policy will be for compensation while employees are out of work after a disaster, and how you will make payroll if computer systems and banks are inaccessible.

You will also need an immediate disaster response plan to cover what you and your employees will do in an emergency and during its aftermath to protect life and limb. This plan should include things like administering first aid, food and water storage, establishing a company-wide meeting place and proper safety precautions that you and your employees should take during and after a disaster.

Protecting your physical resources is more complicated depending on whether you own or lease the building that houses your business. If your building is leased you will need to work with your landlord to develop a solid property protection plan for the building. You and your employees will need to develop a separate plan to protect assets in the leased space such as furniture and computers. If you own your building, consulting with an architect or engineer about your building’s capabilities in a disaster can help you plan what measures need to be taken to protect it. Your local chamber of commerce or Small Business Administration can provide you with a property protection checklist to incorporate into your disaster plan.

Having employees present in an undamaged building after a disaster won’t do any good if you don’t have the critical records you need to run your business. A business continuity plan will ensure that you have procedures in place to protect your vital paper and electronic records. A business continuity plan also needs to address issues like interruption of deliveries from upstream suppliers and estimates of your company’s ability to deliver to your customers after a disaster.

• Turn on the shredder and disengage the safety lock. The “on” switch is located on the back of the machine.
• Place your documents in the feed opening. This machine can shred up to 8 sheets at a time. However, you might find that the shredder’s performance is improved if you shred less than that amount.
• The P-48C can shred credit and debit cards for additional security. Just place your card in the feed opening and the machine will take care of it.
• If you ever experience a paper jam, just put the shredder into reverse mode and tug on your paper. When the jam is cleared, you can go back to shredding as usual.
• Don’t forget to turn the P-48C off when you’re done with it. You should also re-engage the safety lock, especially if there are kids and/or pets around.

You can see the Fellowes P-48C paper shredder in action by watching the embedded video. This video shows you just how easy it is to use the device. Happy shredding!

Business Continuity Planning can offer protection from many potential risks that can threaten your company by disrupting critical business processes. These risks include traditional disasters like earthquakes, fires, floods, and tornados, as well as risks from terrorism (both physical and cyberterrorism), cybercrime, computer failures, theft and employee sabotage. Any one of these events can be extremely disruptive and detrimental to your business, yet all of the potential damage from each of them can be substantially minimized through business continuity management.

A business continuity management program is likely to increase your company’s profitability as the primary focus of business continuity management is to minimize business process disruptions and financial loss during major and minor events. This translates into improved reliability and productivity for your company and consequently, a competitive advantage and increased market share.

Business continuity management is a relatively new term that is often thought of as interchangeable with “disaster recovery”. In fact, business continuity management entails so much more. Business continuity management includes disaster recovery, business recovery, business resumption, contingency planning, emergency and crisis management.

The Benefits of Business Continuity Planning

• Identify and resolve structural problems within an organization.
• Gain a clearer understanding of your business processes.
• Address the “Backlog Trap” scenario before it occurs.
• Streamline business processes to insure easy recovery in the event of a crisis.
• Identify bureaucratic and inefficient structures.
• Create fast and effective communications systems.
• Establish minimum service levels for mission critical activities.
• Cost effectively focus your IT budgets for maximum resilience.
• Identify and prioritize critical business data and storage requirements.

While these types of plans are common in large public entities, they often go uncompleted in emerging ventures. This is because emerging ventures typically have less resources and more critical day-to-day tasks to complete. As such, business continuity planning often gets pushed aside until it’s too late.

Recent events ranging from Hurricane Katrina to the New York City Transit Union strike show that there are many adverse events that could arise with little or no warning. Such events often destroy businesses that are ill equipped to deal with them.

Emerging ventures must create business continuity plans. Such plans will include backing up work and communicating and/or meeting virtually when required among others. Regardless of the specifics of a company’s plans, it must brainstorm potential situations and determine how it will deal with them before they occur.

Fortunately for emerging ventures, business continuity planning can also have positive short-term effects. By assessing multiple what-if scenarios, businesses often come up with new product and service ideas, or new ways of doing business that can increase profits even when no disaster occurs.

It is never too early to begin continuity planning, but clearly there are times when it is too late. As a result, sitting down and beginning your plan today is good business.

If your company hasn’t performed a Business Impact Analysis or doesn‘t have a Disaster Recovery plan in place, then you might find this article useful in its examination of the voice communications and general lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina.

Like many companies, the company I contract with has a Disaster Recovery plan. I’m going to approach this topic from the point-of-view of assuming your PBX/Telecommunications department has embraced a BIA or has non-tested Disaster Recovery Plan n place.

This article will be broken into several topics, with each topic providing a transitional phase to the next. The topics are;

Contingency Planning and Management – Disaster Recovery.
How to identify and rate risks.
Succession Planning.
ORA – Obvious Relationship Awareness.

An Overview: Contingency Planning and Management – “Disaster Recovery”. Voice Communication and General Lessons From Hurricane Katrina

Disaster Recovery can be defined as the identification of critical core component business functions and the processes designed to protect and/or recovery those functions in the event of a disaster. The strategy is to be prepared with a Disaster Recovery plan based on facts, not assumptions or opinions.

Disaster Recovery should certainly be addressed by your company. If your company isn’t prepared for a disaster and is the victim of a disaster, then the recovery process is going to be difficult, precious man-hours/money will be wasted and reactionary rather than proactive planning will be the norm.

I will not go over the BIA process or the actual preparation of a Disaster Recovery plan, as there are plenty of resources on the internet and books available on the subject. Links are available at the end of this article. I will however, discuss some items and real-life experiences that might prove useful when developing your BIA and Disaster Recovery.

Identifying Risks:

Identifying risk is a three is step process; Identify the risk, rate the risk and developing a constructive and practical action plan for the risk(s). I suggest taking the traditional risk identification process a step further and identify your risk(s) for each month of the year.

Step 1: Identification Phase.

Identify your risk. Risk are everywhere and abundant- consider the following:

A. Is your business in a flood zone?

B. Is your business in a tornado zone?

C. Is your business in a hurricane zone?

D. Is your business in an earthquake zone?

E. Is your business susceptible to forest fires?

F. Is your business susceptible to industrial fires?

G. Is your business near a rail station, airport or ship port?

H. Is your business near a government facility?

I. Is your business heavily dependent on outside/external companies?

J. Is your business limited by inbound/outbound roads/bridges?

Risks (A) through (E) are considered natural disasters and may effect entire communities.

Risk (F) may subject your company to mass evacuations and/or temporary shutdowns due to industrial fires or accidents.

Risk (G) may subject your company to mass evacuations and/or temporary shutdowns due to terrorist activities or Hazardous Material spills.

Risk (H) may subject your company to mass evacuations and/or temporary shutdowns due to terrorist activities or threats.

Risk (I) may subject your company to external financial and/or process problems. Imagine if one of your important suppliers suddenly claims bankruptcy or is the target of a hostile takeover or merger /acquisition by one of your competitors.

Risk (J) may subject your company to loss revenue if a main road/highway or bridge is damaged. Imagine if you company is on a peninsula and the main bridge or causeway is impassable.

Step 2. Rating the risk:

Use this Risk Assessment Card to identify risks and rate each one.

Risk Rating* for Each Month

Risk J F M A M J J A S O N D Total

Flooding

Tornados

Hurricanes

Earthquakes

Forest Fires

Industrial Fires/Accidents

Terrorist/Hazardous Materials

Government Imposed Shutdowns
External Processes

Roadways

* – Risks are rated by the probability of the risk occurring and it’s impact on the business. Probability of risk is 1=Low (none or very small chance of the risk occurring), 2=Medium (risk may occur), 3=High. (risk will most likely occur or is imminent) .

*- Impact on Business is a rating of loss of revenue and recovery costs. 1=Low (Loss of revenue and recovery cost is minimal ), 2=Medium (Loss of revenue and/or recovery cost are significant), 3=High (Loss of revenue and recovery cost are significant).

Have each member of your telecommunications department complete the Risk Assessment card and use it as a basis for a brainstorming session. Remember that rigidity can be counter-productive, be open to your employees opinions.

As an example, if your company is on the Gulf Coast, it will be subjected to Hurricane Season. A risk assessment for a Gulf Coast company may look like this:

Risk Rating* for Each Month

Risk J F M A M J J A S O N D Total

Flooding 1 1 1 1 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 1 26

Tornados 0 0 0 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 0 14

Hurricanes 0 0 0 0 0 6 6 6 6 6 6 0 36

Earthquakes 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Forest Fires 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Industrial Fires/Accidents 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Terrorist/Hazardous Materials 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 24

Government Imposed Shutdowns 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 24

External Processes 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Roadways 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 24

Flooding – The company is on the water but is physically elevated. History has shown that the area floods, but is usually caused by storm surge. This is why the risk rating increases during the Hurricane months.

Tornados – Tornados are known to accompany hurricanes and tropical depressions.

Hurricanes – During the months of April through November, the company is highly susceptible to hurricanes which can result in significant loss of revenue and recovery cost.

Earthquakes – The company isn’t in a known earthquake zone. This risk can be ignored.

Forest Fires – The company isn’t near a forest. This risk can be ignored.
Industrial/Accidents – The company isn’t near an industrial park. This risk can be ignored.

Terrorist/HazMat – The company isn’t a traditional target of terrorist activities and isn’t near a company that is a traditional target of terrorist activity. The company is near a railway and may be subject to evacuation caused by a HazMat spill.

Government Shutdowns – The company is near a military base and may be subject to shutdowns or curfews.

External Processes – The company manages many of its processes internally.

Roadways – The company is isolated between two bridges and a main highway. It is possible that an accident may render the bridge impassable, severely limiting employee and client travel.

Thus, according to the Risk Assessment card, the company should focus on Hurricane Disasters (36) before Flooding (26) or Tornado (14) disasters and the company can basically ignore earthquakes and forest fires.

You may also see a trend in May that suggest the company should be;

1. Concerned with Flooding and Tornados before Hurricanes, and

2. The company should be preparing themselves for Hurricane Season.

In addition, the company should be concerned and knowledgeable of alternate roadways and possibly lobbying state/federal agencies for improved access.

Step 3: Developing Constructive and practical action plans.

According to the assessment, hurricanes are the primary threat to the company. The company could use the assessment to establish a Hurricane Preparedness Program;

Promote Understanding of Hurricanes and Their Effects,
Work better to define Hurricane Risks to company functions,
Improve Hurricane-resistant and protection measures,
Encourage the use of Hurricane-Safe Policies and Planning.

Also, the company should also be prepared for flooding and tornados.

Succession Planning:

Succession is defined as:
(1.) series in time: a sequence of people or things coming one after the other in time

(2.) following: the following of one thing after another

(3.) taking up of title or position: the assumption of a position or title, the right to take it up, or the order in which it is taken up .

Succession planning, as used in this article and in the traditional business sense, is simply; identifying ‘who does what’ and ‘who can do it’ if that person isn’t available. You may recognize this as ‘Continuity Planning’ and it is that, plus two additional invaluable considerations – what tools are needed and can it be done remotely?

Succession planning is more that just pasting your organizational chart into a table and labeling it “Succession Plan”. Just as the company needs to identify and rate risk, it will need to identify personnel critical to core components of a company and if those activities can be done remotely, what tools are needed and who is the most practical back-up person.

I’ll use your companies PBX Manager as an example;

Your PBX Manager does much more than manage the telecommunications technicians, prioritizing service calls/work order request and managing a operator staff. He/she is most likely responsible for all of your telecommunication service contracts, your cellular contracts, your pager contracts and may even be responsible for your mobile radios.

He/she will know what your current systems are capable of and possesses insight to internal processes that don’t convey well in a written continuity plan. True continuity isn’t a snapshot of the company at a specific time, but a viable, ever-changing state of business circumstances that only your PBX Manager knows.

As an example, your PBX Manager may be the only person who knows that your pager bill was floating around in an inner-office envelope and is thirty days past due just before the company fell victim to the disaster.

This isn’t to say that Continuity planning should be ignored – quite the opposite. Those processes that can be mapped should be in written/printed format and easily portable. Succession planning is just an important add-on to this procedure, especially for those risk that have some forewarning.

In the risk assessment above, the company identified hurricanes as a primary risk to the company. Fortunately, hurricanes come with some warning. In this instance, a Succession Plan is an excellent way to mitigate the risk to the continuity of the companies voice communications.

Not only do hurricanes come with some forewarning, they are usually accompanied by mandatory evacuations. Lets assume that the company knows that a hurricane is heading their way. The company has prepared the property according to the Hurricane Preparedness program, has educated its employees and heeded the mandatory evacuations. What happens next?

In many cases, ‘What happens next?’ is a play-it-by-ear process, but with a Succession Plan in place – “What happens next – .” is an actionable item, a process – not a question. It’s a prepared process not a reactionary plan.

Suggestions to improve your Succession Plan.

Step 1: Follow the traditional guideline in creating a Succession Plan and Continuity Plan.

Step 2: Have a Succession meeting prior to the disaster, if possible.

Go over your latest Continuity plan and pen-correct those items that have changed.
Obtain the latest problems that haven’t been resolved.
Update important numbers and collect where all team members will be staying,

Step 3: Continuity planning + = An Improved Succession Plan.

Your PBX Manager should be leaving the area to conduct business from a pre-paid, pre-planned location. He/she should know where all the other critical members on the company will be located at (this should be pre-planned as well).
The location can be a hotel room safe from the hurricane or a sister property not in the danger area, or an Emergency Operations Center not in the danger area,
Your PBX Manager should have all the documents of the Continuity Plan,
Your PBX Manager should have a fax machine or access to a fax machine,
Your PBX Manager should forward all calls to his/her office phone to the remote locations number,
Your PBX Manager should be prepared to operate from the temporary location for at least several weeks.

How is this different that a normal Succession Plan? The answer: the pre-paid and pre-planned qualifiers. For those who’ve attempted an late-hour evacuation of an area, you know how hard it is to find a hotel room. You will spend valuable time calling area hotels that can be spent finalizing last minute company business and preparing your personal property.

When hurricane Katrina landed, we had key/critical personnel all over the United States and had to wait for them to check-in. It would’ve made the recovery process simpler had they all be in a central, pre-paid, pre-planned location.

Voice Communication Lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina.

Lesson 1: Your Hot Site/Emergency Operations Center.

The company I contract with has a designated EOC, with a small NorStar system for its voice communications. Two days after Hurricane Katrina – the company knew that the damage to the primary building was extensive and decided to upgrade to a BCM-400, an ISDN-PRI and a 100 DID Number Range at the EOC. The equipment and facilities were ordered from our Regional Bell and the company waited.

The Lesson: I knew that once an area is declared a natural disaster, the areas recovery is controlled by FEMA and Homeland Security. What I did not know is that once Homeland Security takes over that the Regional Bell, Regional Power and other public services follow priorities set by Homeland Security – thus we waited for several weeks before our phone service was turned up.

Lesson 2: Your Succession Plan should have a ‘return-rate-of-staffing‘.

In addition to the tips I offered above with respect to Succession Planning, you should also consider ‘Uncertainty’. Uncertainty is a terrible feeling. Do I still have a job? How did my home make out? What happens next? I’m not a social scientist, but I observed and had many of these feelings. What I noticed is people want some sense of normalcy – and being that we spend so much time at work – people want to return to work.

This is a good article on the Human Factor. ([http://www.ccep.ca/news0205.html])

The Lesson: Your EOC isn’t designed to support non-critical personnel. If personnel who don’t necessarily have to be at ground-zero start returning to work, it places a huge burden on the companies limited resources at the EOC, both data and voice. This burden, plus the fact that you may now need to order additional equipment and/or services to support the added staff – is once again subject to the priorities set forth by Homeland Security.

Return-rate-of-staffing is just a term I’m using to suggest that personnel shouldn’t return to the company just because there is a desk available. The return-rate should be controlled by;

A) There is a desk available,

B) It has a working phone/fax machine,

C) It has a working networked computer,

D) This job is best done from this location.

If there aren’t return-rate-of-staffing qualifiers, then people will return to a desk and start asking for ;

A) A working phone/fax machine,

B) A working networked computer.

This of course, places a burden on your technicians, your systems and the supply line.

Obvious Relationship Awareness (ORA):

ORA is a term I created in my fictional book, “Chaos Theorem” and it is meant to be a play on the word aura. ORA, “Obvious Relationship Awareness”, basically means ‘everything is related and the relational paths are connectors’. Everything is related in the big scheme of things and the connectors are often taken for granted.

The Lesson: Take account of those processes in your company that you can’t control. For example; the fact that we ordered an ISDN-PRI but had to wait until our Regional Bell fulfilled it’s responsibilities to Homeland Security.

Some other examples of ORA:

Take note of your supply lines feeding the company – In the days that followed Hurricane Katrina, the supply lines for any commodity (gas, food, ice, water, electronics, etc) were extremely limited. Shelves sat empty at Best Buy, WalMart, and Circuit City. I lost my home PC and laptop in the storm and had to buy a very expensive laptop (one of the only models left on the shelf) in order to program the new BCM-400 that was purchased.

Map your connectors – know what businesses your company relies heavily on and ‘connect’ beyond them. In effect, know your sources – sources. After a disaster, the company your company relies on might be out-of-business.

Expect water and sewage services to be interrupted. Do you have enough water at your EOC to support your staff? Also consider food and waste disposal.

The disaster-related services and products needed in the Gulf states will cover every aspect of life, business and government in the affected areas. Savvy companies are working to fill the needs now. However, this is a long-term, multi-layered process. While initial contracts have already been secured, there will be many more contracts worth billions of dollars to come over the next 6-12-18 months and longer. Those firms that employ both short-term and long-term strategies will be the most successful.

Step 1: Identify the Agencies with the Budgets to Buy What You Sell

This is one of the advantages in doing business with the federal government. Unlike the corporate environment, you can find out what agencies have budgets projected for your products and services and when they are planning to spend it.

The Department of Commerce Hurricane Contracting Information Center (HCIC) will help U.S. businesses, especially minority and small businesses, participate in the Gulf Coast rebuilding efforts. The HCIC allows companies to register with government agencies that are providing contracts to rebuild the Gulf Coast. The HCIC also provides basic information on doing business with the government, e-mail alerts regarding specific contracting opportunities, links to other government and local agencies, and information about minority business services.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is constantly changing to best serve the nation’s requirements. The 22 agencies that initially made up the DHS originally maintained independent purchasing power. Now, the eight offices listed here are responsible for all procurement functions of the DHS.

DHS Acquisition Offices:

DHS Headquarters

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Note: FEMA is the key agency responsible for the majority of disaster-related budgets

Customs and Border Protection (CBP)

Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC)

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

Transportation Security Administration (TSA)

U.S. Secret Service (USSS)

U.S. Coast Guard Office of Procurement Management (USCG)

FedBizOpps is a federal government website that provides a central listing of most current federal contracts. Register at their website to receive the notices of bids and contracts that go through the normal contract advertising process. However, it has been noted on the FedBizOpps web site that many emergency contracts may not make it to this public forum. You may need to contact each agency to determine the specific opportunities available.

For past expenditures, check with the Federal Procurement Data Center (FPDC), part of the U.S. General Services Administration. The FPDC manages the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS), which is the current central repository of historical information on Federal contracting. The system contains detailed information on contract actions over $2,500. The Executive departments and agencies award over $200 billion annually for goods and services. The system can identify who bought what, from whom, for how much, when and where.

1. Reduce the risk. Reducing the risk falls into 2 categories – reducing the likelihood of the problem occurring and reducing the impact of the problem if it does happen. A simple example is that by having a fire alarm you are reducing the likelihood of a fire spreading unseen and by installing a sprinkler system you are reducing the impact of fire.

Reducing the risk is often referred to as mitigation. For example, data backups are a form of mitigation. They reduce the impact if a problem occurs which affects the primary data source. Any mitigating actions require testing to provide assurance they work when required.

2. Transfer the risk. This is an interesting option which may be seen as a get-out, but which is a perfectly valid thing to do. By transferring a risk it becomes someone else’s problem and you therefore have the risk covered. We are not talking about blaming someone else, or even transferring the risk to someone else in the company.

For example, there could be a risk that office space will not be available in the case of a disaster in the main location. Therefore the risk can be transferred to a third party company which organises office space for disaster recovery and keeps offices available for companies who need such a recovery service.

3. Accept the risk. By accepting the risk of a potential problem you are at least aware of its existence and can plan for it happening. If it is a risk that would have no impact for an acceptable period of time it should still be noted but you may decide to take no action until it occurs.

Almost by definition, accepting a risk is also reducing the impact of the risk as you are aware of the potential problem and can write it into your business continuity plan.

4. Ignore the risk. This option should never be selected. There is never a reason for ignoring a risk once it has been identified. A risk can be accepted (acknowledged) but must never be ignored.

Once the actions for each risk have been identified, then anything put in place to help cope with a risk needs testing. However, many companies either test nothing at all or try testing every facet of a business continuity plan. Both methods are doomed to failure. The answer is to adopt a risk based testing approach from two perspectives: the business continuity plan is fit for purpose and it will work when invoked.

A health check (testing the plan is fit for purpose) needs to be performed by someone other than the authors of the business continuity plan. Ideally it’s performed by an independent third party that specialises in testing business continuity plans, but it could be a disinterested party from another part of the company. Independence is essential here for an objective assessment.

Emergency planning, disaster recovery – these topics have been in the news a lot lately in the United States. Inadvertently I did it as a kid but it isn’t a subject that as an adult I like to think about. In fact I avoid it!! As an account executive at AT&T one of my responsibilities was to be sure my customers had disaster recovery plans. Everyone wants their telephone to work no matter what happens. And yet even so it wasn’t something my clients wanted to address. Many thought the possibility too remote. Others had too many other projects on the table that they said took priority.

It is hard for an estate planning attorney to convince someone he or she needs a will. It is only when something happens in a person’s life, a serious illness or death, that suddenly what was on the back burner comes to the forefront. It is only when something dreadful happens that suddenly we wake up to the fact that planning for an emergency is important. When Terry Schiavo was in the news many who didn’t have health care proxies took the opportunity to sign one.

After Hurricane Katrina suddenly people are now looking at contingency planning. Governments too have been challenged where contingency planning is concerned. If there are disaster recovery plans my guess is that few thought about the possibility of everyone having to evacuate their homes. If there were evacuation plans at all then most likely they would have ended by everyone going to a public building. Who would have considered busing people away from the area entirely?

Katrina has been a horrific event for us all. Looking at the lessons though and making our plans accordingly is extremely important. So one lesson I know I have learned is that I want to be sure that federal, state and local governments have a really clear plans that are coordinated with each other. I want to know about these plans too because I have a responsibility for myself, my family and my business.

As I think about this however I am uncomfortable about my own planning. What do I do in the event of a disaster? I can feel my own resistance in even thinking about it! Several months ago my mastermind group was talking about backing up their computer files. One member of the group actually took his back up disc to another location to be sure that if a fire or flood hit his office he would still have his files. I was really impressed by that and started to think about it for myself. The possibility seemed remote then but certainly now I do see the point.

Sadly, most small and home-based business owners won’t do that. It’s a tragic way to reduce the competition. But if you choose to prepare for disaster, you’ll still BE the competition!

The enhance your chances of still being around, you need to create a disaster preparedness plan. Even something very simple could help greatly. The most important aspects of your plan are to make it practical and easy to maintain.

A good disaster preparedness plan starts with disaster prevention. General prevention is mostly good common sense. Natural catastrophes such as wildfires, major storms and earthquakes can quickly convert your office or facility into a danger zone if you’re not prepared. But most of the events that destroy businesses never make the news — things like on-site accidents and small fires that happen somewhere every moment of every day.

Those things are certainly disasters. But there’s an even worse disaster that happens later if you aren’t ready: the unnecessary demise of your business afterward. That’s the disaster that you can prepare for by planning ahead.

Disaster prevention steps

Here are some basic steps for safeguarding your employees and business from unnecessary damage:

1. Pay attention to public warnings. Don’t second-guess evacuation orders. Better to err on the side of caution.

2. Establish emergency evacuation procedures.

3. Keep fire extinguishers and first aid kits on hand and check them regularly.

4. Keep a cell phone programmed with emergency contact and employee numbers.

5. Back up your data daily. Keep a copy offsite or in a fire- and waterproof safe.

6. Regularly update your insurance info: equipment, inventory, etc. Keep a copy of this offsite (or in a safe) as well.

7. Look for fall hazards: piled boxes, overhead materials, and so forth. Rearrange to protect yourself and your people from unnecessary harm.

8. Don’t let debris, empty containers or recyclable materials pile up.

9. Avoid overstocking flammable items, such as fuel or materials with a rapid flash point (such as loose paper and cardboard).

10. Use appropriate safety containers for flammable items.

11. Establish a firebreak around your facility if possible, and internal firebreaks as well, such as a ten-foot perimeter around propane tanks if you have them.

12. Keep tree branches trimmed back from structures, equipment and inventory.

13. Try to separate equipment, inventory, and storage items in order to mitigate the domino effect of fire spreading to all areas of your business.

These suggestions are just a sample of what you can do to avoid unnecessary damage. Walk through your office or facility and imagine what could happen if it was suddenly hit by a fire or flood. Your common sense will guide you to create a good disaster prevention plan in order to minimize your exposure to devastation.

Since losing a business is considered a “major life stressor”, along with divorce and the death of a loved one, a business owner that loses a business can be just as emotionally devastated. With this in mind, it is appropriate for the business owner to take into account the five stages of grief that do occur in a major life event or “stressor”. These stages are according to the work of renowned Swiss born psychiatrist, Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross:

1. Denial. This stage is a healthy stage when the individual asks the question, “Why Me”?, and develops strategies to develop defenses against the impending stress.

2. Anger or Resentment. Blame occurs in this stage.

3. Bargaining. This is a “truce period” where an individual makes “deals” in their minds, if “only” things don’t play out the way they are bound to do so.

4. Depression. This is the real grief phase, and an individual will primarily feel discouraged and hopeless.

5. Acceptance. This is where reality is dealt with and the process of “going on” begins. Withdrawal from others may occur temporarily here.

Although Dr. Kubler-Ross developed the five stages primarily to be used when dealing with terminal illnesses that lead to death, her work can readily be applied to many major life stresses, including the loss of a business. In addition, not all individuals go through each stage routinely in order, with some skipping stages, or staying in one stage longer than others.

Business owners that suffer the catastrophic loss of a business need to allow themselves the same flexibility and time for acceptance that other major life stressors require. They need to work through the five stages until the fifth stage, acceptance, is reached. They also need to put the loss into perspective if they can, and determine just “why” and “how” the business faltered and eventually failed.

With defeat, sometimes knowledge is attained, and if a business owner can work through the stages of grief successfully, and use the knowledge attained for enlightenment, then perhaps they can successfully start another business in the future, and achieve better results.

Business owners should make a list after they are on their feet again of exactly “what” went wrong, and methods of prevention in the future, as they can then use this to their advantages. The list can include such information such as:

1. Why the business failed overall: Was it the wrong type of business for the wrong type of clientele? Was it targeted incorrectly? Was it too unusual to succeed? Was the marketing of the business incorrect? Were the expenditures too great? Was the business plan and outlook faulty or realistic?

2. What mistakes led up to the failure: Did the business grow too quickly or too slowly? Were there actual methods in place for prevention, or was the business “reactive” rather than “proactive”?

3. What can the business owner correct/rectify in the future? This is the most important question, and a list of all methods that may be used as a measure against future failures should be made.

Business owners need to give themselves time to heal and sort through their feelings, though. Any loss is so emotionally draining, that jumping right back into the “business fire” with another business is not necessarily a good idea until the business owner has recovered their energy and worked through their feelings of grief completely.

The lifeblood of any staffing business is information. Your client data, orders, assignments, employee information, payroll and billing data, and more. Information that’s locked securely away in your software and systems, unless they are destroyed in some kind of disaster. While you can’t anticipate when or if a disaster might occur, you can prepare for the possibility of such an event.

How do you get started? There are essentially five steps that must take place in order to protect your hardware and software investment from a natural disaster:

• Create a Disaster Recovery Team
• Develop a Disaster Recovery Plan
• Test the Plan
• Communicate the Plan
• Implement the Plan

Let’s break these five steps down one by one to provide more specifics:

Create a Disaster Recovery Team — Disaster preparedness and recovery is a team effort. There must be a group in place that has been briefed on what procedures and protocols to follow should an event take place. This team should be made up members from four organizational components of your firm:

• Information Technology — the team member that is most critical to success
• Operations — your customer liaison
• Administration — the finance side of the business
• Management — Buy in from the top is critical

Each member of the team is important but look to your IT representative to pull the whole plan together and make it work.

Develop a Disaster Recovery Plan — Now that you have pulled together a team, it is time to put your plan down on paper. Remember that your plan should be flexible enough to handle different types of disasters, everything from a simple power outage all the way up to a major incident. The plan should include three phases, which are:

• Preparation phase — what are you going to do before the event to ensure that you are ready?
• Implementation phase — now that the event is upon us, what do we do?
• Post audit phase — now that we have implemented our plan, what needs to change?

Input from all business unit representatives on your team is critical. While building the plan each team member should be considering three basic questions:

• What could my group do to prepare?
• What will we do to keep the business running in the event of a catastrophic situation?
• What dependencies upon other groups do I have, and have I spoken to those people about their ideas, suggestions, and concerns?

You’ll probably want to gather some additional information to assist you in developing a comprehensive plan that’s right for your staffing business. Then, assemble the following information:

• Organization chart showing names and positions
• Staff emergency contact information
• List of suppliers and contact numbers
• List of emergency services and contact numbers
• Operations and Administrative procedures
• Asset inventories
• IT inventories
• IT system specification
• Copies of critical software
• Communication system specification
• Copies of maintenance agreements and service level agreements
• Off-site storage procedures

Test the Plan — Once the plan is developed and documented the next step is to test it with a dry run. This will take a detailed level of coordination among the Disaster Recovery Team members. The idea is to keep this test as realistic as possible. That may mean that it happens in the middle of the night and the group has to assemble and report into the team leader. It is better to test it when you don’t need it instead of finding out at crunch time that there are holes in the plan.

After completing the test, there will surely be some modifications. These changes will be uncovered once the team has a chance to sit back and review each phase of the plan in detail. You should test your plan at least once a year and then update it as needed. Open communication is important to successfully modifying the plan so it will work for your company.

Communicate the Plan — Now that you have a tested plan that you’re confident in, don’t keep it under wraps! Let your entire company know that you have a plan, that a team of representatives from each department was involved in the creation of the plan and that if disaster should strike — you will be ready. There should be a representative from each of your business units that is responsible for communicating the plan to their peers. The plan should be well-documented, including contact information for the primary and secondary stakeholders, and then distributed to the entire company.

Don’t forget that communication of your disaster plan extends to your clients, candidates, and associate employees as well. Letting them know that you have a plan in place gives them the assurance that you’re thinking of the business relationship you have with them and that you will do everything possible to maintain it.

There is an added bonus to this complete and thoughtful level of communication. This will give your staff an increased feeling of confidence and preparedness. It may also encourage your staff to take this ‘plan before you need it’ approach in their daily work lives.

Implement the Plan — When the time comes, don’t panic, implement. You have prepared, documented and tested — now put it into action. Remember, this event wasn’t scheduled, so be as flexible as possible in a time of crisis. You have been proactive in your planning but implementation is a time to also be reactive to the current situation. Also, remember to perform a post audit after the dust settles. Constant evaluation of your plan based on what you learn will ensure that is up to date and as efficient as possible.

Each of these five steps is critical to the success of the overall goal of being prepared. Your company and your situation are unique but the guidelines detailed above offer a blueprint for preparedness should a disaster occur. With a strong plan in place before any disaster, you’ll be able to get your business running with the least possible impact.

With disasters like hurricanes, tornados, fires, floods and terrorism, to name a few, it’s critical for small companies to have a disaster plan. And for companies with only one location, it’s even more important. One location companies have the potential to lose the entire business if disaster strikes. For a home-based business, it’s even worse. You could lose your home and your business in one swoop. Any small business owner can minimize the damage by simply having proactive strategies in place to deal with an emergency when it happens. What if:

• You arrive at your business to find it vandalized and all of your customer records missing?
• Your most critical employee becomes ill and requires an extended absence?
• Your computer hard drive (or network) crashes?
• You become the primary care giver for a sick family member?
• You become ill and can’t manage your customer commitments?
• Your business becomes inaccessible because of an emergency on your street?

What would you do?

Would your business survive? What would you grab if you had to leave your business quickly? After the emergency, how would you communicate with your employees? Customers? How long would it take to get back to business as usual?

Without a disaster plan, you’ll have a harder time getting back to work. Most businesspeople think it will just take two or three days. That’s tough to do if you have no plan for action and little money to move forward. The reality, experts say, is more like several months and at least 25 percent of businesses that experience a disaster never reopen.

All your marketing achievements — all the effort, the financial expenditure, and the energy spent in cultivating a high profile — can be dashed by one ill-handed communications disaster.

Enlightened companies, from neighborhood restaurants and retailers to multinational merchants and manufacturers, have a risk management plan for dealing with a disaster. They buy insurance in event of fire, make contingency plans for failed equipment, train management personnel to carry on during labor strikes, code products to track sales, and expedite a recall if necessary.

But as much thought as they’ve given to overcoming operations disasters, many of those companies have given little hought to how to communicate during the emergency; how to let their consumers know “the food you ate here last night was not tainted,” assure their employees that “everything’s under control at the XYZ plant,”, tell their neighbors that secure safety measures are in place,” Simple, clear-headed, advance preparation of a crisis communications plan is equired in today’s disaster prone business climate.

Although the specifics of each crisis communications plan depend on many factors (the size of the company, its distinct corporate culture, the product or service it delivers), there are some essential rules that all contain.

The following seven steps, adapted from Joan McGrath and Myrna Pedersen, principals of Pedersen/McGrath Associates, Ltd., Chicago, should guide you in preparing a basic plan so that you can communicate efficiently, effectively, and rthrightly at the moment an emergency hits your organization. You’ll get your company through the incident with its image intact or even enhanced.

1. Identify all the disasters that conceivably could confront your company. Include the routine crises your particular business might face (eg. a bus company might anticipate a highway accident) and the unexpected (eg. untimely death of
company president). Practice formulating responses to these potential crises.

2. Identify the person who should be your company’s spokesperson. This should be someone high enough in the corporate structure to be believable, and comfortable in a public role. Be prepared to relieve this individual of all other duties for the duration of a major crisis in order to concentrate on communicating accurately and sincerely. Only one person should have the role of spokesperson but one of two alternates should be identified if the principal spokesperson is ill, on vacation or unavailable for some other reason.

3. In highly public crises, the media would appear to be the most important audience. But it is necessary to calculate all the different “real” audiences you might need to reach and to figure out, in advance, how you would reach them. A key component of your crisis plan is to analyze each relevant constituency you serve and to organize in advance efficient vehicles to reach these audiences.

4. Develop your crisis communications plan with clear, easy to access instructions.

5. Assemble material you may find to be relevant in a crisis, either as background for reporters or as quick reference for your spokesperson.

6. Make duplicates of everything and store them in a safe, off-site place.

7. No matter how comprehensive, a crisis communications plan is a living document and needs to be revisited regularly.

Finally, on an on-going basis, cultivate relationships that will aid you in a crisis. Get to know members of the media one-on-one. Meet in person or by phone with key community officials, vendors, and customers to develop a rapport and let them know yours in a caring company. This personal interaction can buy you a lot of support in the eye of the storm.

As we come to depend on computers more and more every day, we also make a considerable investment in the data we produce with those computers. Massive data sets were once generated only by large corporations and scientific institutions. But now with the monstrous surge in computer use by millions of individuals and small businesses, there has become a need to provide the same data protection solutions on a smaller scale to facilitate the efficient backup and retrieval of all kinds of data for nearly all types of computer users.

Think about the type of information you store on your personal computer at home. Many computer users store hundreds (or even thousands) of files ranging from word processing documents to personal finance information to educational materials. The fact is: We use our computers every day and have the potential to suffer a great loss of productivity and irreplaceable data from something as common as an electrical storm. What would you do if you woke up one day to find that the entire contents of your computer were now inaccessible to you?

Fortunately, it is now extremely cost effective to implement a Data Disaster Recovery solution that not only backs up all the files of your choosing at an interval set by you, but also provides access to your data 24 hours a day, should you need to recover your data at any time.

Gaining immediate access to your backed up data is as simple as loading the software, typing your password, and enjoying a direct connection to your own secure online data repository with instant data recovery. The process is completely automated and can be initiated in seconds from any computer in the world. You can be secure in knowing that your data is safe and sound, stored in a world class facility with redundant power backup and as much storage as you need to ensure your most important files are there for you when you need them.

Have you ever lost all of the data on a floppy disk and had to redo an entire afternoon’s work? Perhaps you have rendered a music or game CD unusable because of a tiny scratch? Maybe you have experienced a full fledged hard drive meltdown that resulted in gigabytes of lost data and months, even YEARS of lost effort.

The “worst case scenario” happened to me a few years ago. I received a call from a friend informing me that my home had been broken into and the burglars had not only stolen the electronics in the living room but had also taken the house’s PCs. I learned the hard way that data backup is something that every computer user who has important data on their hard drive cannot live without. Whether you simply purchase an external drive that you can connect via USB or Firewire, or sign up for offsite secure data backup, make sure you take steps to guarantee that your data is safe and sound, even if the worst happens to your computer hardware.

It doesn’t hit you right away when you no longer have access to your data. The first things that come to mind are the expensive hardware that went into building your machine. Maybe you had a nice flat panel monitor or a state of the art video card for playing the latest games. While it can be very disappointing to lose expensive tech goodies like these it is still no comparison to losing those zeros and ones etched into every user’s hard drive. Hardware can nearly always be replaced, even at no cost to you if you have insurance, but lost data is gone forever. There is no way to recover data that you have not backed up if you lose the original media it was stored on.

In my case, I was not using offsite secure data backup, or any kind of backup for that matter. My backup was about six months old and sitting on a tape drive in my closet. When those thieves walked off with my machine they left with not only an excellent gaming platform but also my entire web design portfolio, numerous customized versions of my resume, THOUSANDS of MP3 files that I had ripped from CDs (many of which I had lost the original CD for), Microsoft Money files, and thousands of digital photographs that are impossible to replace.

Take a moment and think about all the important digital files you have on your computer and ask yourself if it is worth investing a little of your time and money in an online remote backup solution to make sure that data is available for you for a lifetime.