Your computer, software, databases, files, applications, systems software and computer networks are all part of your information technology (IT) assets.  Like most other public and private organizations, you and your company are extremely dependent upon IT and would find it impractical if not almost impossible to function without it.  Any temporary or extended loss to any portion of these IT assets could have tremendous impact on your company’s financial and economic stability and to your own security.  

This eBook details 18 Steps for Protection of Your Information Assets as part of a plan to ensure the protection and recovery of your vital information assets. The reality is that because you depend on crucial IT assets, you cannot risk being without such a plan.

Ever since the September 11, 2001, attack on New York City and Washington D.C., companies, governments and individuals within North America and throughout the world can no longer feel that they are safe from terrorism.  And while terrorism is on the rise, it also pays to remember that there are many more threats to our safety.  Threats such as power failures, floods, fires, hazardous materials, earthquakes, tornadoes, disgruntled employees, vandalism, demonstrators, hackers, and computer viruses and worms can also attack the vulnerabilities of our information technologies.  

Risk management is a method of identifying potential disasters that may cause temporary or extended loss to one or more of your information systems, and of developing and implementing cost-effective countermeasures to cope with these disasters.

Most of you probably use passwords, virus protection and firewalls, though not necessarily well.  Few of you use encryption or anonymous web proxies, though these easy-to-use techniques are important to ensure privacy of your information.  These techniques are used to reduce the possibility of a problem.  But business continuity planning will permit you to recover your IT assets quickly and relatively painlessly (though not totally without pain).

Drawn from over 30 years of his experience in the high technology industry as a management consultant focusing on disaster recovery/business continuity planning, strategic information planning, business process renewal, performance measurement and improvement, and process improvement, Randall Colville created this well-organized and indispensable eBook for a clear purpose: to provide some easy-to-do steps for you to protect your information assets and to ensure that your business can continue if a problem occurs.

Probably less than 5% of you have prepared a business continuity plan.  After reading this eBook you will know how to create and implement a business continuity plan in order to ensure the protection and recovery of your information assets.

A business continuity plan is a program to reduce the effects of a disaster by providing smooth, rapid restoration of your company’s critical operations until the lost information technology assets can be recovered or restored.  It is difficult to quantify the total impact of any single information system loss.  A few days without your computers and network might have only minimal effect¾or it could cost millions.

IT loss over an extended period, however, could conceivably cause so much damage to your company that it would have great difficulty returning to its normal operation.  A business continuity plan will reduce the possibility of such damage.  Unlike large organizations and governments, you probably do not have either the skills and knowledge or the money to hire experts to develop an all-encompassing and expensive business continuity plan. 

You do not need much money to plan for disasters, however you do need to take some simple, inexpensive steps – things that you can do, first, to prevent most problems from occurring, and second, to prepare and be able to resume your business operations while ensuring that business continues, if not normally, then as close to normal as possible.  At least you will be comfortable that you will not go out of business due to a disaster.

But if you do not plan for disasters, you could suddenly be out of business.  It is believed within the disaster recovery industry that 95% of those businesses (micro, small, medium and large) that do not have a business continuity plan in place when a major disaster such as 9/11 strikes will quickly be out of business.

No business continuity plan will replace a normal operating environment.  The plan’s primary purpose is to counter any disaster that might cause a temporary, but extended, loss of your information systems.  The plan should not be restricted to any single disaster; rather it should be designed to adapt to almost any situation, and the expense should be commensurate with the risk and magnitude of loss.  An effective business continuity plan is a dynamic and evolving document.

For example, there are many unscrupulous individuals in the world and it sometimes seems that they all have computers and are working just as hard as you.  After reading this eBook you will know what you need to do in order to protect your information assets from these individuals.

Not everybody will need to complete all 18 steps.  Not everyone can or should do everything.  But everybody, and especially mobile computer users, should think about his or her specific needs and implement a planned program of computer and information protection.  Without a plan, you leave yourself wide open to computer invasion and the many other threats to your IT safety and the potential loss of all information.

Get this eBook now and learn some simple, inexpensive steps – things that you can do, first, to prevent most problems from occurring, and second, to prepare and be able to resume your business operations while ensuring that business continues, if not normally, then as close to normal as possible.  Randall Colville’s 18 Steps for Protection of Your Information Assets is a thorough and concise eBook that you will continue to use as your needs change.  Each chapter is augmented with links to information and resources, making this a highly useful reference work as well as a valuable guide to information security.

Act now to get the full advantage of disaster recovery!  For a modest investment you will be one of the wise and the few that will have fully prepared for the distinct possibility that your valuable assets will be endangered by a calamity.  There’s no guarantee that a disaster will occur, but you can be guaranteed that it will be difficult, costly and time-consuming to recover from a disaster if you haven’t taken the necessary steps to prepare.  At the very least you will be comfortable that you can recover your valuable IT assets.  Moreover, you will be able to retain and resume your business. 

If you’re not protected, your next IT investment should be 18 Steps for Protection of Your Information Assets.