Still Putting Off Disaster Preparation?

We’ve posted a variety of articles this year about dealing with disasters when they affect your business. It’s an important subject that unfortunately goes overlooked far too often.

Emphasizing this point are the results of a new survey conducted by Office Depot, which found that 40% of small businesses in the U.S. are indeed unprepared for disaster.

Disaster can be a natural disaster, a fire, or even getting hit by a computer virus. These can all be devastating to a small business. So why aren’t more businesses preparing for the worst?

Well, according to the survey, 37% of those that are not prepared say that they have just not taken the time to do so. 17% cited cost as being the main reason, and 11% simply just don’t know what to do.

"What’s most alarming about these new survey findings is that small businesses still have strong misperceptions about what they can do to help prepare for a disaster so they will be ready to handle any potential business interruption," says Office Depot Director of Global Business Continuity Tom Serio.

Not all methods of disaster preparation are expensive. There are some preventative measures that can be taken for a very small price and equally small amount of time.

"A $1 piece of media, like a CD-R, to store data such as contact information and important presentations, could make a big difference in being able to keep your business running. And it only takes minutes to back up your data on a regular basis," Serio pointed out.

Sure, he may want you to take a trip to Office Depot and purchase some supplies, but it doesn’t change the fact that backing data up is important. If you are still putting this type of thing off, I suggest turning on the news at any given time. Disaster seems to almost always be striking somewhere, and I’m sure you can find plenty of horror stories online about people getting hit by viruses and hackers.

What makes you think you are safe?