What would home business owners do if they lost all of their business data tomorrow? With a busy hurricane season on our hands, it is important to consider how you will protect your business data.
Below is a short and practical guide to assure that your home business does not fall victim to unnecessary data loss.
- Back up your data regularly. If you run multiple computers (even laptops), backing everything up daily can save you from a world of pain.
- Run all backups during non-business hours to assure your home network capacity isn’t taxed unnecessarily, especially if you currently have kids at home doing remote schooling.
- Consider services like Box or Dropbox to store some of your general data but make sure to take very good care to protect your passwords for these services. Any time a system caters to a large amount of people, they become a target for hacking.
- If you plan on storing any sensitive data in the cloud, remember that you need to work with a service that provides the necessary security protocols (PCI, HIPAA, etc). Remember, your home business can be on the hook if data is lost, or worse — stolen.
- Have a “go-box” in your home. A “go-box” is a computer or large capacity storage device that stores copies of all of your sensitive data and can easily be taken with you in case of an emergency. Store it in a high dry place.
- Assure your backup devices run on solid-state drives. These are newer types of hard drives that operate faster and have no moving parts. Many consumer laptops still have older style hard drives that are slow and break easily. Solid-state drives have no moving parts, making them more robust, meaning that they travel better.
- Consider placing your computers or laptops into waterproof dry bags. These are bags specifically made for computers in case of flooding.
- Not being able to access your data is like losing it. That can be hard on a home-based business. Thus we always advocate for setting up systems to make data access as easy as possible. Consider having an electrician add a manual transfer switch to your home. This will allow you to power some of your home’s electric with a traditional generator found at your local home improvement store.
- Don’t forget your website! We encourage all of our clients to have a copy of your website on hand at all times.
- If you have staff working from their homes, assure that they backup up their computers as well.
- Provide your staff with a hurricane preparedness checklist specifically for business equipment and important procedures. You want to assure there is a standardized process in place before everyone is frantically trying to do things last minute.
Finally, we recommend assigning specific people to specific responsibilities before any storm is even on the horizon. A well-prepared home business is a calm home business.
