Comstock's magazine 0118 - January 2018 | Seite 75

SPECIAL PROMOTIONAL SECTION
And they have bottom-line benefits beyond
lower insurance rates: They’re a way for
businesses to assess their procedures, says
Lisanne Sison, director of risk management
consulting, of the Sacramento office of Bick-
more, a risk consulting firm.
HOW MUCH DOWNTIME CAN YOU
AFFORD?
On a Wednesday morning in January 2010,
Burke’s employees were at Quest Technol-
ogy Management’s headquarters (which
at the time were in Sacramento) when high
winds ripped down eight utility poles in front
of the building. The office went dark, and the
road was blocked by hot wires.
For the team, it was time to put their di-
saster plan into action. The generator and
backup batteries kicked on, and the com-
puters and phones came back. The staff
remained trapped until 4:30 p.m. Once
evacuated, some moved to Quest’s busi-
ness recovery center and others telecom-
muted. Staff wouldn’t return to the office for
a week. But the company’s total downtime
was a mere 15 minutes.
Different types of businesses require
different types of disaster plans. Some
businesses — say, a restaurant or jewelry
store — can be down for a few days and
not risk shutting down. That’s not true of
a bank, whose customers won’t tolerate a
closure. Quest clients can actually rent desk
space at one of the firm’s recovery centers
in McClellan and Roseville. In an emer-
gency, critical employees physically move
to the backup center. “Businesses need to
ask themselves, ‘Do we care? Can we do
without our systems for a few days or two
weeks? Can we not contact our customers
for two weeks?’” says Burke.
Data backup holds particular peril. It’s
obviously critical to backup offsite — out
of your geographic area or to the cloud.
But a step many businesses forget is to
regularly test-restore at least a sample
of files from the backup, says Matthew
Brooks of Sonoma Technology Partners
in Santa Rosa, which provides disaster
and business continuity planning. (The
company had clients in the path of the
wildfires but none who lost buildings.) He
once worked with an organization whose
leaders thought they were doing backups
nightly, but someone had forgotten to des-
ignate data folders for the backup — for a
year. The company averted calamity only
because no servers crashed.
Brooks says the Tubbs Fire swept into
Santa Rosa in the early hours on a Monday
morning when most offices were emp-
ty. Businesses that had disaster plans for
moving to an alternate location are now up
and running. Many of those that didn’t are
closed and will never reopen. “That’s the
power of disaster planning,” he says. n
Steven Yoder writes about business, real estate
and criminal justice. His work has appeared
in The Fiscal Times, Salon, The Ameri-
can Prospect and elsewhere. On Twitter
@syodertweet and at stevenyoder.net.
How We Help
The American Red Cross exists to provide compassionate care to those in need. Our network of generous donors, volunteers
and employees share a mission of preventing and relieving suffering, here at home and around the world, through five
key service areas including disaster relief, supporting military families, supplying blood, health and safety instruction, and
international humanitarian work.
Volunteer—Make a Difference In Your Community
Nearly 95% of Red Cross disaster relief workers are volunteers, who respond to displaced families in our
24-county region nearly three times a day. The vast majority of those families are displaced by home fires.
Join us by volunteering to help deliver this critical support.
Prevent Home Fires
The Red Cross responds to nearly 64,000 disasters every year—most of which are home fires. That’s why
the Red Cross launched our nationwide Home Fire Campaign in 2014 and rallied an army of volunteers,
donors and partners to canvass high-risk neighborhoods, install free smoke alarms, replace batteries in
existing alarms and help families create escape plans. Learn more at soundthealarm.org.
Impact Lives—Donate Today
The Red Cross is not a government agency, and depends on the generosity of the communities we serve.
Make your donation today at redcross.org/goldcountry.
Learn More!
redcross.org/goldcountry |
facebook.com/arcgoldcountry |
@ARCGoldCountry
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