Assess your disaster recovery needs and develop a plan. Make sure your employees know their roles in it. Test it every year.

Those were some of the suggestions from experts at this morning’s “Disaster Recover” breakfast at the City Club of Cleveland. The breakfast was the first in a new Crain’s Cleveland Business meeting series called “Ideas at Dawn.” About 100 people attended.

Shawn Sturgeon, sales engineer at Time Warner Cable Business Class, a co-sponsor of the event, told guests that disasters come in a variety of forms. Relatively small disruptions such as a server or mainframe crash can be just as problematic to businesses as technology, staffing or operational problems caused by large-scale disasters resulting from floods or tornadoes, he said.

“What does it cost your business to be down for an hour, a day, a week or more,” Mr. Sturgeon asked. “You have to identify that in developing a (disaster recover) plan.”

Such plans are critical, he said, because, “If you can’t provide your product or service, somebody else will step in to do it.”

Neil Adelman, CEO of Cleveland-based data storage company BlueBridge Networks LLC, said plans to protect and recover data are becoming more important to businesses because of the “massive growth” in the volume of data they handle; some estimates put data growth at 30% to 70% per year, in part due to government requirements stemming from legislation such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

Head off the bleeding

Mr. Adelman suggested that business owners and operators review their data backup needs to determine which type of system - such as magnetic tape, discs or data replication - best fits their needs. He also said companies should make sure to invest in high-quality servers and to place “tier one” servers in a “reliable environment” such as a hosted data center.

Planning for disasters is key, Mr. Adelman said, citing a quote attributed to Gen. George S. Patton: “The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.”

He also suggested that companies conduct formal post-disaster assessments to determine the cause of the problem, if it wasn’t obvious, and to assess whether the disaster plan was well-designed and carried out effectively.

Kathy Nagy, business continuity coordinator for the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, urged businesses not to forget their people while focusing on technology.

“It’s important that every employee understands the (disaster recovery) plan and their role in it,” she said. Companies should test their plans annually, she said, so when a real disaster hits, employees are prepared to do what’s needed to address it.

Test your plan, again and again

No two disaster recovery plans are alike, Ms. Nagy said, so businesses need to give thought to questions that pertain specifically to their operations. For instance, if employees can’t access the home office during a disaster, should there be an alternative site where they can work? How far away should that site be from the home office?

“It comes down to planning, testing and continuing to test your plan,” Ms. Nagy said.

Patrick Cusick, a disease surveillance specialist with the Cleveland Department of Public Health, said companies that have not looked at their disaster recovery plans in more than a year should do so immediately. He also warned that companies often rely too heavily on technology and do not have hard copies of critical documents available in case those documents are not available electronically.

Since disease monitoring is his thing, Mr. Cusick also recommended that companies make employees aware of the dangers that can result from sick employees coming to work and infecting the rest of the office.

“You have people who think things just can’t go on without them, but then a few days later, you have five people out,” Mr. Cusick said.