Sooner or later your company could become the victim of a natural disaster, or something much more common like a lightning storm or downed power lines.

Just because your company may be a small business doesn't mean it's immune to data disasters. If a small business does not have a good and tested disaster recovery plan in place when disaster hits they may never fully recuperate and it may even cause them to go out of business. Sometimes even a data recovery service is unable to be of any help.

Following are some questions that should be answered in order to give you some idea of what you need to do to that will help you if you do have a data disaster situation.

Do you know where your company's most important data files are located?

Are these files being backed up and by what means?

How often do you run these data backups and are they verified and tested?

Do you have automated controls that correctly and on a consistent basis do the backups?

Do your data backup tapes go off-site and how often?

Do you have some kind of security against tampering or theft of your data backups?

Do you keep your servers, routers, hubs, and phone system controllers in locked areas to keep them more secure?

Does just anyone have access to your servers and your other technology assets or do you limit access to at least two, but no more than four people?

Do you run a locally securable operating system, such as Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional, Microsoft Windows XP, or Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4,on the company's desktop PCs and notebooks?

Do you have any confidential data stored locally on any desktop PCs or notebooks? Are any of these systems running an inherently in-secure operating system, such as Microsoft Windows 9x or Microsoft Windows Me?

Do you prevent unauthorized boot-ups or tampering with BIOS configuration settings by using power-on passwords?

On your desktop PCs and notebooks, how are main updates, service packs and releases kept current?

The bottom line is that you can't plan when a data disaster may strike but taking a few steps beforehand may help with your company's survival in the days and weeks following a disaster.