Many disasters are unforeseeable.
For example, Tessco Technologies, located outside Baltimore, Maryland thought it had little to fear. It was not in a flood zone, not in an earthquake zone and devastating hurricanes were more than hundred year events. But in the case of Tessco, the culprit was a faulty fire hydrant.
One outside its Hunt Valley data center failed spectacularly on October 12, 2002 and several hundred thousand gallons of water blasted through a concrete wall leaving the companyb s primary data center under several feet of water and left some 1,400 hard drives and 400 SAN disks soaking wet and caked with mud and debris.
While it might not seem b sexyb or progressive to prepare for disaster, the risk of b sticking your head in the sandb is just too great.B Yes, there will likely be a cost associated with proper preparation.B And, yes, I imagine there are other ways youb d like to invest that money.B But, whatb s your business worth?
If you have a mortgage on your home, the lender is going to require that you buy insurance.B They arenb t willing to risk the exposure to catastrophic loss.B Even if the lender didnb t require insurance, would you forego the cost of property insurance?B I doubt it.
The problem is that preparing for a data loss disaster isnb t that easy.B If we could simply buy insurance, web d probably do it b and may even already have some business continuity insurance with our policy thatb s already in place.B Unfortunately, in the event of a disaster, the insurance coverage will not come close to restoring you to where you were pre-disaster.
What would I like to leave you with?B One of the primary initiatives for CIOs is to create, implement and test a comprehensive disaster recovery plan.B And, if you donb t have a CIO, then I urge you to make this a top level management priority b even, and especially, if the only one to delegate this to is you!B Remember, web re here to help.
