Hurricane Season = Business Continuity Season

With the start of U.S. hurricane season this week and record-breaking tornados already upon us, Acronis (www.acronis.com/ja-jp/) is releasing business continuity tips that should be part of every business owner or manager's planning.

Weather experts are predicting that this will be an above-average year for hurricanes, with some saying that there will be in upwards of 15 named storms. The effects of weather-related disruptions can be devastating for businesses, so advanced preparation is critical. With that in mind, Acronis, a provider of affordable, scalable storage management and disaster recovery software, has released these Top 5 business continuity tips.

1. Batten down the hatches: Take an honest look at your office to see how you could more safely and securely store files, materials and heavy items. Are emergency exits and fire extinguishers up to code? Perform quarterly assessments to ensure your workspace is prepared. Often local fire and safety officials will assist for little or no charge.
2. Spread the word: Just as with home emergency plans, it helps for businesses to create a detailed procedure for what to do in the event something happens, and whether employees are in the office, en route, or at home. That could mean office-wide fire drills and call lists to get the word out quickly. For larger companies, a well-publicized website on the Intranet might do the trick.
3. Protect digital assets along with physical assets: With so much of business assets today residing on computers in digital form – documents, photos, intellectual property – backup and recovery becomes a critical part of business continuity planning. To ensure that companies can be up and running quickly, consider making images of computers and servers so full copies of data and applications are safely tucked away. In the event that something happens, the images can be loaded onto to new hardware in hours rather than days.
4. Test your plans: Having a plan for a disaster is fine, but you need to test your plans to make sure everyone knows what to do. Just as your family should have a plan that says where people will meet in case of a disaster, your company should have a plan on how your data will be protected. Test your plan often, especially when you change key employees.
5. Not all disasters are natural disasters: Remember that not every disaster will involve fire, flood, wind or earthquakes. In fact, most corporate data losses do not involved natural disasters at all. Your data protection plan must be as effective against data loss due to user error as it is to hurricanes and tornados. Simplicity is the key. Make sure all of your data is protected — operating systems, programs, configuration files, security updates and user data. The best approach for saving your data is disk imaging rather than file-based backups. Being prepared for any data-loss event is the first priority.

"For businesses, it's not just that time's money, but information is money," said Walter Scott, CEO of Acronis Inc. "The faster that company operations, including its computer systems, can be back up and running after unplanned disruptions, the better it is for customers, employees and the bottom line."

Acronis provides backup and recovery software that helps small and large businesses ensure not only the preservation of digital assets, but also the rapid recovery of those assets after a storm has passed. For more information, go to www.acronis.com.