DR Part 1 – What’s Your Backup Plan?
This is Part 1 of a multi-part series on disaster recovery planning.
Ok, we all have computers and other data that is critical to our long term lives.
- Insurance Paperwork – coverage amounts/info, phone numbers, etc.
- Financial Data (accounts, credit cards, safe deposit keys, mortgage info, brokerage accounts, Quicken files, etc)
- Photo Albums (physical and electronic); wedding pictures, baby pictures, vacations.
- Video Files and media – DVDs and other media we’ve acquired over the years for large expense; Let’s put games in here too. That $70 game you just bought for the kid – and 20 others just like it.
- Music – I have hundreds of music CDs and hundreds of tapes, plus they’ve all been converted to digital formats.
- Web passwords
- root account passwords for home and work computers, routers, phone systems, etc. Basically, think of this as your most secret stuff
- Address books (physical and web)
- Computer programs for work, home, fun – I have $1,000s of dollars worth if you add up all the license costs. MS-Office, Stock trading tools, plus all the time creating XLS files, Perl scripts, etc….
Ok, so you’ve got some important stuff. Here’s the scenario:
- A semi truck has overturned 2 blocks from your home.
- Another truck has hit it and there’s a cloud of deadly gas.
- The gas causes a local gas station to blow up and all the nearby homes are on fire. Your house appears to be in the path … in 30 minutes it is gone.
- It is 4am and you hear the loudspeaker claiming to be the county sheriff – there’s a mandatory evacuation. You have 15 minutes to leave.
- The following day, a tornado or earthquake or something else hits your region – everybody is homeless for 100 miles around.
What do you do?
What do you take?
What do you leave behind?
Do you have a plan?
What is YOUR plan?
Yes, this scenario is bad and unlikely. Recall back to the Cold War days. Imagine you lived near a military target – likely to be hit by a nuclear warhead with little or zero warning. Or updated for terrorism today, it is a suitcase bomb (nuclear or biological) and it accidentally goes off near your home. Got a plan?