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Build A Virtual Go-Bag

In this time of wildfire evacuations, people in risk areas are advised to keep a personal ‘Go-Bag’ handy in case they need to drop everything and go. Evacuations can happen at work, too, triggered by a wildfire, a gas leak, or for other reasons. If you need to evacuate, we recommend that you prepare a virtual Go-Bag with priority items you need to recover your business operations. Here’s what should be in it.

By Ellen Koskinen-Dodgson

Ellen Koskinen-Dodgson is President and Managing Partner of TMC IT and Telecom Consulting Inc. She is an IT and Telecommunications Management Consultant, electrical engineer, author, speaker, media resource and Expert Witness.

Virtual Is Best

Life safety is critical above all else so a physical go-bag might not work for you. When the day comes, you might not have a chance to collect it and carry it out with you. You might not even have a chance to grab your wallet or car keys as you make a run for it.

A ‘virtual go-bag’ means that you have arranged all priority items you’ll need to be off-site, secure and ready to use. To the question of physical vs. cloud, either will work if they keep your data outside of your evacuation zone and it contains what you need to resume business operations—at least the most critical operations.

Ideally, this should include good backups, transaction logs, digital versions of work-in-progress, and of critical importance: instructions of what to do. Just think - if Fred and Susan know how to restore service, what will you do if neither is available due to vacation or sick leave?

Backups

Basic backup processes allow you to recover your business data as of the moment you did that backup. However, if you only back up weekly, then your business could lose a week of data. Even daily backups can leave a gap.

Logs

Transaction logs record every action for all mission critical applications. Restoration is now a case of reloading the backup and then reloading the log to get up to date. If you have a remote disaster recovery site on your network copy logs there. If not, then use a cloud service and keep it in sync with your main operation.

Paper

You really need to think about the flow of all information around your business in all forms, including work- in-progress – think in-trays and papers on desks.

Ideally you will design your business processes to secure critical data as soon as possible, likely by scanning important paper documents.

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If you’d like to comment on this article or explore these ideas further, contact me at .

This article was published in the August 2021 edition of The TMC Advisor
- ISSN 2369-663X Volume:8 Issue:4

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