It’s fairly well-known amongst business owners and executives that losing all of your technology is a quick and easy way to kill your business. In fact, these days it’s the loss of technology that tends to wipe a company out in a natural disaster more than the loss of physical space, workdays, or even inventory.
What a lot of successful men and women in business don’t realize, however, is that it doesn’t take a major earthquake or hurricane to kill your technology. You can lose it all in a relatively simple (and predictable) situation like:
- Theft. The technology in your office is vulnerable, which is why there is always the risk of theft in almost any company, both from those who would like to break in and those who work in your office. You might be surprised at how easily your company’s technology can be derailed by one missing piece of the puzzle, especially if it isn’t one you can replace with a similar make or model.
- Vandalism. Vandalism may not seem like a major tragedy, but it really can wreck your technology. Even if insurance covers the damage, you could still be looking at extensive downtime while you wait for new equipment or work to get your hardware and software back up and running.
- Fire. Although having a fire at your office or facility might not lead you to think about your technology first, the reality is that your hardware, software, and stored data might end up being the most critical loss. That’s because (other than your employees), you can replace most other parts of your business, but fire-damaged technology could be gone forever in a matter of minutes.
- User error. A lot of the time, IT disasters aren’t disasters at all, but simply the natural result of using a piece of hardware or software the wrong way. If you or one of your employees does something you shouldn’t have, you could find yourself wondering where all of your technology – and the profitability of your company – went in a matter of moments.
- Hardware failure. Even the best pieces of technology fail from time to time. No matter where you’ve gotten things like workstations, servers, and other equipment, there is always the risk that they will go off-line, either temporarily or permanently.
As common and diverse as all of these situations are, they all have one thing in common: you can protect yourself from their effects by having a good backup and disaster-recovery plan in place. So, if you aren’t protecting your business from minor disasters as well as major ones, talk to us about safeguarding your technology today.