The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry recently discovered that four out of five London SMEs had neither a written security policy nor a contingency plan to deal with disasters such as fire, severe flooding or terrorist attacks.

What's more is that 80 per cent of companies did not have adequate procedures to deal with IT and utility failures that would otherwise enable the business to continue functioning effectively during times of emergency.

These findings are made all the more harrowing by the potential implications of such shortfalls:

90 per cent of business that lose data as a result of a disaster are forced to shut within two years of the disaster
80 per cent of business without a well-structured recovery plan are forced to shut within 12 months of a flood or fire
50 per cent of companies experiencing a major computer outage will be forced to shut within five years

Companies of all sizes should have recovery plans to deal with disasters and several key precautions should always be high on the agenda.

Following these seven tips will help you offset the potential IT catastrophes in the event of disasters.

Always easy to say in hindsight

You should consider partnering with a services provider that promises full support before, during and after any disaster. By doing this, any IT disaster recovery functions will not be a responsibility for your afflicted company.

Insure computer equipment and records, a suggestion of paramount importance which should be followed up by the periodical re-evaluation of insurance policies to avoid any discrepancies.

You should always back up data, another universally recognised procedure, but you should also take advantage of the advanced duplication software applications continually being introduced to the market that are designed explicitly for fault tolerance.

All IT staff and administrators must be trained and made fully aware of what to focus on in case of incident and particularly for after an event to help re-establish operations quickly.

If at a larger firm, you should ascertain as to whether wide-area disaster recovery is possible or needed sas to allow for the transfer and recovery of data. Effective wide-area IP-based networking can also help maintain application and data availability actually during disasters.

You should pay considerable attention to computer server and storage platforms which are essential when dealing with disasters and should consider various protection solutions.

You should consider redundant hot-swap components, including disk drives, fans and power supplies, plus external storage devices.