Computer Systems Tech Support Fairfield County, CT

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning for Fairfield County Business

Get ready for trouble

When a disaster strikes, will you be prepared? Disaster recovery and business continuity planning is vital to an organizations survival. Not all events are hurricanes, floods, fires or tornados. Although we had our fair share of those here in Fairfield County, Connecticut., less newsworthy events are the far more common, unplanned outages occurring everyday and include electrical, plumbing or facility failures.

The image on the right is a Power-Outage snapshot during the freak Fairfield County and Connecticut October snowstorm as reported on Connecticut Power & Light's website. The black key represents close to 100% power loss. As beak as it looks there are technologies available that let business continue working. As us about them.

Can your business survive just one of these events for even a few hours or days? The impact to your business can be staggering.

• 40% of all SMBs will go out of business if they cannot get to their data in the first 24 hours after a crisis. -- Gartner, Stamford, Connecticut
• 43% of companies never resume business following a major fire. Another 35% are out of business within 3 years. -- U.S. National Fire Protection Agency
• "Small companies often spend more time planning their company picnics than for an event that could put them out of business."  -- Katherine Heaviside, Epoch 5

Computer Systems Support & Design has extensive disaster recovery and business continuity planning to help guide clients through the process of understanding where to start and most importantly, how to finish and test their plan.

We take a step-by-step, best practices approach in starting with your core business needs through completion and testing of the plan. Here is how:

Know what you do

It's crucial to understand what your business does to stay in business. Sounds simple but identifying the most critical resources is the first step in developing a plan. Ask yourself:

• What are our most critical business lines and services?
• Which of our functions cannot tolerate loss of data or unavailability "no matter what"?
• Can we ensure timely recovery of critical applications, people, data, platforms and networks?

Prepare for the unexpected

One of the best ways to ensure data survival and business continuity is to make sure data and resources are somewhere else if a disaster strikes.

Computer Systems Support & Design focuses on disaster recovery back-up and restoration technology early on. Even if the plan is still in development, this needs to be done first to ensure your business has the means to continue delivery of service that accounts for people, facilities, data, systems and processes at the time of a disaster.

Unlike many other providers, Computer Systems Support & Design brings together the two concepts of back-up and restore planning with business continuity planning.

Practice makes perfect

Once the business continuity and recover plan is done, it is important to test it. We help clients fine tune and regularly test their plans and provide modifications for your growing business.

With Computer Systems Support & Design, you gain a dedicated business partner. We provide comprehensive technological solutions that are custom designed for your business with only your needs in mind. Our philosophy is to treat each client’s needs as an on-going program and develop solutions around emerging technologies and services.

Let Computer Systems Support & Design’s Disaster Recovery and Planning Services help you and your business take the important steps needed to stay in business.

Call today (203) 348-8047 Ext 211

Computer Systems Support & Design, LLC is an independent service provider for Information Technology Support for third party products and services. Any use of third party trademarks, brand names, products and services is only referential in nature and Computer Systems Support & Design, LLC hereby disclaims any sponsorship, affiliation or endorsement of or by any such third party.

Our FREE Disaster Recovery Plan Helps You Prepare

You hear it all the time from us—back up your data, keep your virus protection current, and install and maintain a firewall to protect yourself and your client’s data from hackers, online threats and even physical disasters.

However, while these precautions will certainly help you avoid problems, they CAN’T do anything if you don’t have a good backup and disaster recovery plan in place. 

Is Your Setup a Disaster Waiting to Happen?

We all know that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure; yet, disaster recovery planning often takes a distant second to the daily deadlines and pressures of running a Business. That means that most firms, including your own, may end up offline and without your data after a simple lightening or winter snow storm. The image on the left is the Power-Outage situation during the freak Fairfield County and Connecticut October 2011 snowstorm as reported by Connecticut Power & Light. The black key represents close to 100% power loss. As bleak as it looks there are technologies available that let business continue working. Read more about true backup and disaster recovery options.

Don’t think that could ever happen to you? Consider this: “data-erasing disasters” can also take the form of office fires and broken water pipes. If a fire started in your building, the parts that weren’t burned beyond recovery would probably be destroyed by the firemen’s efforts. Or you may recall the truck that drove into an office building in Westport, Connecticut closing it for months. But even more common is software corruption, hardware failures, human error and theft!

Disaster Recovery Questions
You Need To Answer

 A disaster recovery plan doesn't have to be complicated, time-consuming or expensive. Start by asking yourself the following questions...

1. Do you back up your practices data daily to both an onsite and offsite location?
2. Are you absolutely certain that your backup copy is valid, complete and not corrupt? How do you know for sure?
3. If disaster strikes, HOW would you get your data back, and how long would it take? In many cases it takes days and often weeks; what would you do during that period of time?
4. Do you have copies of all the software licenses and discs in a safe location that could be accessed in the event of having to rebuild your server?
5. Would you and your employees have a way to access your network remotely if you couldn't get to the office?
6. Do you store important passwords in a secure place that partners can access if you are unavailable?
7. Do you have a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) device in place to keep your network and other critical data operations running during a power outage?

    This is NOT a complete list, but it is a good start to get you thinking in the right direction. 

Our FREE Disaster Recovery Plan Helps You Prepare

We’ve decided to help our clients get their “IT house” in order by giving away a FREE Backup and Disaster Recovery Audit. At no charge or obligation, we’ll come to your office, review your current disaster recovery plan (or lack of one!) and provide a simple action plan on what you need to do to make sure your firm can always be up and running.

For more information, please contact our office at (203) 349-8047 Ext. 211 and ask for Johannes Banck, SBSC or e-mail us at jb at cssdllc.com