Everyone is busy. In
today’s world people are busy even when they are retired. Business goes to those who hustle, and each
business is focused on beating their competitors. Long-term success is not
gained by hustle alone. It is gained by
thoughtful planning and follow through. The time is takes to do this type of
planning takes away time from the immediate hustle that we are all
participating in, but in the end wins out.
Disaster recovery planning is such an activity. In the words of the great Benjamin Franklin “Failure to plan is planning to fail”. Disasters can and do happen. They can take on different forms including natural disasters (which is a minority), user error (statistically the highest percentage), personnel loss and increasingly, a security incident.
More so today than ever, your security defenses are linked
with your disaster recovery plans. A ransomware infection, as an example, is
both a security incident and a disaster.
The two cannot be thought of separately anymore.
The planning that goes into having a good security response
plan and a good disaster recovery plan is the type of work that seemingly takes
you away from the hustle that is part of your day to day grind. It is difficult
to carve out the time to evaluate your business’ preparedness, but it is
absolutely vital.
When I am trying to make the case to an organization that making time for disaster recovery planning is not only necessary but going to make them more successful in the long run, I often refer to Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. In his book, Covey takes about the four quadrants where people spend their time as outlined in the graphic below:
Figure 1: Stephen Covey’s Time Management Matrix
Most people spend their time in quadrants one and
three. These are activities that have
urgency (both important and not important).
Of course, people will spend time on urgent and important activities,
which are emergencies and disasters, but Covey argues that truly effective
people spend the bulk of their time in quadrant two. By planning, you avoid those disasters that
pull you into quadrant one and effective people delegate the non-important and
spend their time on the important.
Disaster Recovery planning is a perfect example of an important but not
(yet) urgent activity that Covey is speaking about. If you don’t put the time
into preparation and planning, and a disaster hits, you are in for a difficult,
quadrant one day.
How confident are you in your disaster recovery and security
response plans? What are you working on
today? Are you working in quadrant two as effective people do? Give us a call
at (888) 600-4560 or email us at info@coldencompany.com
to discuss your plans.