Cancer, Car accidents, hacking, card fraud all have a lot in common – They only happen to other people, not you.

Is this arrogance, ignorance or what?

Everyone knows someone that something bad has happened to, if not then themselves, then someone close, or a friend, or a friend of a friend, maybe somebody in the same village or town even somebody living in a faraway country but in similar circumstances.

So in a word Sh*t happens, a lot, to everyone all the time so it can never be ignorance.  Maybe the alternative to “it’ll never happen to me” is a permanent fear that something is going to happen which is bordering on the symptoms of depression.

So if appers that we go around with an optimistic view on life to avoid the permenant worry of what’s going to happen next.  That’s fine as it enables us to lead a normal life of driving, shopping, flying kindly of the things we do on a day to day basis.

BAD NEWS.
That’s really bad news, we need to establish some form of balance unfortunately we don’t.  The anytime we do this is when we plan for emergencies that are unlikely to happen.  When we go on holiday we take offense take a first aid kit and no one really leaves without insurance.  I even know someone who drains down the heating system when they go away, which is usually in the summer.
 
It’s the same thing that suddenly wakes us up at four in the morning and gets us to worry what speed we went past that little yellow camera on the side of the road.
 
All of these things do not really need to be worried about because although they do happen the chance of us facing a disaster like we have imagined is unlikely.

It’s also guaranteed that it won’t happen because we have planned what we would do in case of an emergency.  I sail in all types of boats, I wear life jackets, make sure that there is manoverboard equipment, first aid kits etc.  Luckily I have never had to use this equipment and I hope I never will.

Now the point of this article is that the things that almost likely to happen, in fact happen every day to lots of people are so far down their list of priorities that no thought is at a given to them even on a  yearly basis.

Your building is unusable – KEEP OUT
The day of the 1987 stolen I went to work as usual, I didn’t expect anything different nobody had called and apart from losing the side of my house, the large amount of trees I expected to roll up at our Colchester office and start work as usual.

What I didn’t expect was to see 36 people standing outside staring of the site of the building.  The whole side which was made of glass had been totally removed by the next door factory roof.  We had asbestos and glass all over 50% of the building.  In my office the carpet was ruined, the wall and door had glass embedded in it.  The computer screen was smashed and as it turned out all of are servers were destroyed.  “It” had just happened to us.

All backups were off site, we had spare equipment, another office and we were up and running again later that day.

We had a plan.
We had actually spent some time compiling everything we needed to implement a disaster  plan.  We started from the premis that we would arrive at the very large hole which was water filled that now replaced our 6,800 sq foot office building in south Colchester, we prepare the same plan for Ipswich.

We went around everybody in the company announced what they would need to be operational again, this was incorporated into the plan and tasks were delegated.  We looked at everything, wrote it all up and circulated plenty of copies.  Apart from the daily routine of data backup the plan was forgotten except when it came out to be reviewed once a year during a meeting of everyone, usually down the pub ensuring 100% attendance.

We had confidence that should a disaster strike we had done as much as possible.  Backups were tested and we had established a routine.

That disaster cost us nothing, not a bean, no cash flow interruption, no lost data and we were able on the same day to go out and look after clients who had faced thier own disasters.

We get 250 calls a year over lost data 
We get roughly one call a day from someone who has lost their  data, that’s over 250 calls a year. We have special software that can unscramble disk drives. No one else we know does this.

Only a fraction of the callers, as low as 2%, has an adequate backup.  Most of them think may have but they haven’t.  I suspect that that only 2% of all the people who start reading this article will get this far.  If you have then I am personally available to come to you and check your backup. Free of charge. That’s to prove my point. I will publish the results in a months time of who has taken me up on this my number is 01206 256459 or 01473 231800 ask for extension 25 and I will talk to if I am in, if not I’ll ring you back as soon as I can. 

Security
Doesn’t have to be a big disaster, or even one you can see, you can have a virus, a hacking or fraud attempt. These can cost you so much more and in a shorter time. The difference is you may not know about it until its too late.

The moral is?
Its not down to arrogance, its all down to ignorance and ignorance especially about planning. I was once told “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”, that’s a military adage. here’s another “Proper Planning Prevents P*** Poor Performance” and my particular favourite, Lack of preparation on your behalf does not justify an emergency on mine”. When bad things happen we react, its better to have the cool judgement of a previous “you” telling you what to do than the “panic you” running round in ever decreasing circles doing headless chicken impressions as you hard built up business disappears into dust & debt.

The moral is that everyone needs a plan, needs to check it and make sure it works. Our clients may not know it but we have a disaster plan for them too.  We have loan equipment and the expertise to get them up and running as quickly as possible.
 
This will all be useless unless the backups are good enough, they have the proper insurance policy and the ability to start up again somewhere else almost immediately.

Oh I forgot, its what happens to other people isn’t it? Like the people flooded in  Wales, Someset, London and the riots in Croydon, Brixton, Toxteth.