A sudden explosion recently occurred during “happy hour” at a famous restaurant in the Midwest. The building was destroyed, but even more tragically, an employee was killed. A business cannot be protected for loss of life. I do not propose any solution for this horrific event to cover this loss.
If such a tragedy occurred at your business, how adequately would you be prepared? The tragedy wouldn’t even have to be as catastrophic as a total loss of fiscal plant, FFE (furniture, fixtures, and equipment), records and building. Let us assume for a moment a simple accidental deletion of data. The resulting loss of dollars and/or customers could be costly.
Are ALL your systems backed up? Are CRM data files and accounting records protected? You may be atypical, but my guess is that they are not. You may be saying to yourself, “Yale is only preaching about corporate record backup.” When I was at Harvard Business School this year, we read a case about Mozy and Drop Box and reviewed other such iCloud services. Many reasonable automated systems are available for backing up servers for your Apple equipment or your PC’s.
Each of you can do this. Lives cannot be replaced, but you can do something about protecting your assets of data. You can buy new equipment and, if you have a backup IT system, you can replace your data. Do not be in denial, thinking “it won’t happen to us.” Check your procedures and develop good disciplines to protect yourself and company’s data.