Features

At six o'clock on the morning of Sunday 11 December last year, scores of businesses near the Buncefield fuel depot in Hertfordshire were preparing for the busy run up to Christmas. Barely an hour later, after a series of massive explosions ripped apart the depot, resulting in one of the largest fires in Europe since the Second World War, many of those business premises had been destroyed. Computer systems and business records were lost; thriving firms were paralysed. Online fashion retailer Asos had to return the money taken for goods that couldn't be dispatched, and its shares were suspended. Disaster plans were activated as managers and staff struggled with the consquences. Mercifully, such catastrophes are rare. But data stored in computers is ephemeral: with a twitch of your mouse or a glitch in your software, it can be lost instantly. Whether your problem is a missing document or total destruction, if you have no prior plan, you have no hope of recovery. In the following pages, you will see how to prepare for disasters using specialist products and services to get you up and running as quickly as possible. But above all, we will show you how to plan for the unthinkable.