CIMA IT Solutions

Triggering the Expected Results from your Online Efforts.

You are here: Home / Archives for 7 Week Plan to Safeguard Small Business Assets

Week 7: Disaster recovery

by


  • Now it is time for that strategic thought that the boss is always doing with eyes closed: “What would happen if…?”
  • You need a disaster recovery plan. For a small, independent business, it is a bit different than a bigger group.
  • What would happen if the building burns?
  • How will you recover?
  • Remember those off-site backups?
  • How will you get in contact with your insurer, employee(s), and customer(s)?
  • You probably need a copy of that data on paper, in your fire safe at home or in the safe deposit box. What if the pipes freeze and break?
  • Can you raise the inventory off the floor a bit on some shelving?
  • What if the place is burglarized?
  • What do you need to re-start within the week?
  • List it and at least sketch out a priority list of things to do.
  • What if one of your customers gives you their influenza and it takes you a week or two to get back on your feet?
  • Short-term disability insurance, health insurance, something like that might be useful. What if you are in an auto accident and it takes you a couple of months to get back on your feet?
  • Long-term disability insurance might be worth a look. (Car accidents are far more common than fires, floods, and locust invasions.)
  • Now that you have planned out what you can do, and put some of the plans in place (off-site backups, recovery plan), it is time to think about business continuity insurance.

← Week 6

 

Main Article 7 Week Plan to Safeguard Your Small Business Assets

 

Week 6: Reduce liability

by


  • Look for “pinch points” that trap small fingers, cracked sidewalks, seasonal slick spots where people walk, and such. Any places you do not want customers into? Solve them. Your lawyer will hate you. He loses fees. Your insurer will like you. They (and you?) save money. Your customers probably, will not even notice, until they cannot sue you because they slipped on the ice.
  • You have to think like a four-year-old boy (they get into trouble; I know from personal experience). They stick fingers into places fingers should not go (pinch points). They stumble over the pattern in concrete. They pour sodas down your office printer. (OK, maybe will take a month or two to fix all these, but now you have the list, and can tackle each one as you have time and money.) And, now that you have reduced the obvious hazards, consider business liability insurance.

← Week 5 — Week 7 →

 

Main Article 7 Week Plan to Safeguard Your Small Business Assets

Week 5: A backup routine

by


  • What if your business gets burglarized and the accounting computer is stolen?
  • You probably drop your receipts at the bank every night, or at least once a week, have a fire safe for the records you keep on-site, and a key to lock that fire safe.
  • If your business gets caught in a fire you would like to rebuild your records quickly.
  • Back to our computer-savvy friend: have them write you a simple script to dump your data files to a big thumb drive (budget $50 ~ 100 per drive), or buy a backup program.
  • Take backups of your data, and the installation disks and license numbers for each of your software programs, and drop them in that same safe deposit box you put your tax and other records in.
  • Store those off-site from your business. Take the backups on Friday night, drop them off Saturday morning when you do your banking.

 

← Week 4 — Week 6 →

 

Main Article 7 Week Plan to Safeguard Your Small Business Assets

 

Week 4: Safety First

by

  • All data that has been entered to your books and into your accounting program needs protection. It would be a shame to lose all that data, so, let’s tighten up and harden that box.
  • You want an Internet security program that includes a personal firewall, antivirus software and anti-spyware. Budget about $150 and an hour or so to install, configure (according to directions) and update it.
  • One copy per computer you have, whether at home, work, or a laptop you carry around. If you are in the habit of leaving your computers on, it is very feasible for someone to attack the computer and copy, remove or destroy the data. We are locking that down through this process.
  • When you finally upgrade to a new computer, do not just give the old one away without wiping the hard drive. Deleting everything will not work. I’ve found everything from birthday greetings to budgets to business proposals on “deleted” drives. Back to your friendly computer person, and ask for a secure wiping program that will over-write the disk at least seven times. Launch it and let it work for a day or three. Then give the computer away. (I don’t give any disks away without wiping. With diskettes, I prefer to take them apart and physically destroy them. Thumb (USB/flash) drives are crushed.)
  • When your administrative assistant moves on to a different job, change the passwords on your computers and firewall. Chances are he had the passwords and logon information. While people usually bear you no ill will, there is always one person somewhere who is willing to do something wrong. Sometimes even good people do the wrong thing when presented with an opportunity too good to pass up.

 

← Week 3 — Week 5 →

 

Main Article 7 Week Plan to Safeguard Your Small Business Assets

 

Week 3: Wireless Security

by

  • How would you like your “office/business park” to see what checks you print out each week? No
  • Get out the manual for that wireless access point (WAP) that you bought and stuffed under a desk when you got it working.
  • Does it mention any thing about a firewall? If not, budget about $150 for one that combines firewall, router, printer port and wireless access point. Did you ever configure it? See if you wrote down the password to get back into it, or read up on how to re-set it to the default, because we start there. This will cost you about a day, so Sunday pick up some pastries, a pot of coffee, and plan on some work.
    • Select a non-routable address range for your office net work.
    • Select a password for the administrative account. No words from a dictionary or profanity (too easy). Pick something with numbers, letters, capitals, and special characters (shift-numbers). Write it down, seal it in an envelope, and drop it in your safe deposit box or fire safe at home so you can find it again. Do not use your business name or your birthday. If they let you change the adminname, write that down too, and pick something other than “boss,”or “administrator.”Use something totally unrelated to your business.
    • Read that manual and learn how to properly configure the access point.

← Week 2 —  Week 4 →

Main Article 7 Week Plan to Safeguard Your Small Business Assets