Master Disaster: Companies that protect their vital data are better prepared to bounce back from mishaps

Sunday, October 2, 2005

Damage from hurricanes Katrina and Rita have heightened awareness among companies across the country about protecting important documents. DataChambers LLC, a business-continuity, disaster-recovery and data-entry solutions company in Winston-Salem, has even gained customers from the storm fallout.

"In two cases, they're looking for places to put their equipment," said Nicholas Kottyan, the company's chief executive.

Disasters come in all forms.

"Let's face it, the majority of them are not Katrina situations," Kottyan said. "There are a lot of other situations. There could be power outages. It could be human error."

Ideally, companies should identify their vital records before a disaster strikes.

"That means what's essential to the operation of the company and for meeting any legal requirements," said Cyndy Launchbaugh, a spokeswoman for ARMA International. "Those are the things that you want to be able to make sure that, no matter what, are available because that's going to be what allows you to get back up and running as quickly as possible."

ARMA is a nonprofit professional association and authority on managing records and information.

Vital records include current accounts-receivable and payable records; ownerhip records for land, buildings, equipment and vehicles; current contracts and agreements; personnel and payroll records; customer files; and tax records.

Companies should worry about damage long before a storm hits, said Ken Rubin, a spokesman for Iron Mountain Inc., a records-management and data-protection services company with an operation in Greensboro.

He said that companies should have already done a business-impact analysis and come up with a disaster-recovery plan, most of which primarily address computing information and vital records. "From a computing-operations standpoint, companies really should think about three things: People, data and their computing capabilities," he said.

A lot of companies don't adequately prepare for disasters - natural or manmade.

A business-continuity/preparedness survey conducted this year by AT&T and the International Association of Emergency Managers found that 39 percent of companies surveyed don't consider business-continuity planning a high priority. Of the respondents, 57 percent have redundant servers and backups, compared with 60 percent in 2004.

Launchbaugh said that a good plan for emergencies has four phases: prevention, preparedness, response and recovery.

The preparedness phase includes developing and updating a plan for emergencies, training personnel, lining up approved recovery vendors and establishing hot sites.

Rubin describes a hot site as a vendor site where there is basically a mirror image of a company's system available for use.

Experts agree that electronic data should be backed up regularly and that all records - electronic and hard copy - should be off-site in a secure and readily accessible place.

"When you have a disruption, you don't want to have to spend a lot of time finding all this stuff and trying to reconstruct all the time," said Bill Dunkelberg, the chief economist for the National Federation of Independent Business. "It saves you a lot of money and a lot of time."

Aladdin Travel and Meeting Planners Inc. in Winston-Salem conducts its business electronically.

The company provides corporate-travel management for businesses and plans vacation and group trips and meetings.

"If the computers and the phones go, we're out of business," said Nancy Dunn, the company's chief executive.

Three years ago, Aladdin Travel's accounting system crashed, teaching employees a valuable lesson about the importance of backing up vital records regularly.

"It meant we had to go back and manually re-enter a week's worth of data," Dunn said. "That is data that generally moves from the airline-reservation system over to our accounting system, so it's not something that's ever done manually."

Dunn said she now feels secure because the company's accounting system is backed up daily at DataChambers, which handles electronic backup for servers in 22 states.

Carol Chastang, a spokeswoman for the Office of Disaster Assistance for the Small Business Administration, also suggested keeping a backup copy of computers' basic operating systems and important software.

"Keep a copy on-site but then also keep a copy off-site, preferably maybe even 50 miles away," she said.

Rubin said that the distance needed to secure data varies, depending on the nature of a building and how susceptible a company is to a disaster, but most companies prefer between 15 to 30 miles.

In addition to the companies that provide off-site storage and other services, there are businesses that simply provide online-data backup services.

Dunkelberg said that small business not interested in paying for these types of services can copy their own computer files on hard disks and send them to trusted friends and relatives.

But Rubin said that there have been cases in which small businesses sent data home with their employees and the data was lost because the site wasn't secure.

Experts offered other advice for companies to prepare for disasters:

• Update disaster plans regularly, making sure employees are aware of steps that will be taken and their roles.
• Identify vendors or resources in advance to avoid wasting time during a crisis and trying to figure out who can help. For example, make arrangements in advance with computer vendors to replace damaged hardware that is vital to a business.

"So business owners must make sure that they keep invoices, shipping lists and documentation of systems configurations off site," Chastang said.

• Have a plan for protecting desktop data.

Today, 60 percent of data is on laptop computers, but most companies just worry about their centralized computing operations, Rubin said.

• Records that are stored on-site should be in airtight, waterproof and fireproof storage.
• Annually review and update insurance policies; know what is and isn't covered.

Chastang of the SBA said that it's human nature for people to not prepare for disasters.

"I think people really don't want to consider a worse-case scenario," she said.

But Kottyan of DataChambers said that companies shouldn't wait until the last minute to make preparations.

"You've got to prepare," he said. "How many folks are in New Orleans or not in New Orleans that had businesses there that have no business left?"

By Fran Daniel
JOURNAL REPORTER