Hurricane Ike
Thousands of businesses in Texas from Freeport to Houston are wondering, “How are we going to survive Hurricane Ike and continue business operations afterwards?”
If this is the first time this has crossed your mind, there’s precious little you can do now but kiss your systems and hope that they are still running when you see them again. The storm surge is supposed to exceed 20 feet, which will prove disastrous to many businesses.
But when you get back to the workplace and things are back to normal (which I hope is not too long), start thinking seriously about disaster recovery planning. A DR project does not have to be expensive or take a lot of resources, and it’s not just for large businesses. Organizations of every size need a DR plan: the plan may be large and complex in big organizations, but it will be small and manageable and not be expensive to develop.
Hurricane Ike's Path
Where do you begin? At the beginning, of course, by identifying your most critical business processes, and all of the resources that those processes depend on. Then you begin to figure out how you will continue those processes if one or more of those critical resources are not available. The approach is systematic and simple, and repetitive: you go step by step through each process, identifying critical dependencies, figuring out how to mitigate those dependencies if they go “offline” at a critical time.
Order yourself a great book that will get you started. As one reviewer said, “It would be tempting to make all sorts of snide comments about a Dummies book that wants to take a serious look at disaster recovery of your IT area. But this is a Dummies title that you’ll actually go back to a number of times if you’re responsible for making sure your organization survives a disaster… IT Disaster Recovery Planning for Dummies by Peter Gregory. It’s actually the first book on the subject that I found interesting *and* readable to an average computer professional….” read the rest of this review here and here.
Don’t put this off – but strike while the iron is hot and get a copy of this now. Don’t wait for the next hurricane to catch you off-guard.
I don’t want to see any business unprepared and fail as a result of a natural disaster. If it were up to me, disaster preparedness would be required by law, but instead it’s a free choice for most business owners. I just wish that more would choose the path of preparation and survival, but unfortunately many do not. I wrote IT Disaster Recovery Planning For Dummies to help more people understand the importance of advance disaster recovery planning and how easy the planning process can be.
Peter H. Gregory 
Am I being opportunistic? Well it may appear so, but let me put it this way: every copy of the book that sells, I make somewhere between $1.00 and $1.50 – that’s it! However, the VALUE that the reader receives if he/she puts the book into action can range from thousands to millions of dollars.
I did not write IT Disaster Recovery Planning for Dummies for the money – far from it. I did it to fulfill my mission: “Reach the widest possible worldwide audience with information on data security, business security, and information assurance.” My books are a public service with relatively small compensation (given all the time I put into a book, the hourly rate can be as low as unskilled labor). I write books because it is my passion to help as many people as possible, by sharing information and experience that I have through the written word.