It's everyone's worst nightmare a natural or manmade catastrophe that wreaks havoc on the people, places and things that come together to make a business. From fires and earthquakes to hacker attacks and terrorist acts, disasters can and do have a dramatic  effect on businesses large and small.

The terrorist attacks reached far beyond the most unimaginable scenario, yet they happened. For many of the businesses located at ground zero in New York City, the devastating effect of the collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) may be too much to bear and some may never recover.

Real Time at Ground Zero

Several firms affected by the attacks had backup plans in place, and within hours of the event, teams of disaster recovery specialists were executing plans with the assistance of Recall Americas' data protection services. It helped dozens of clients who were affected by the attacks including eight in the WTC towers and more in the surrounding financial district.

On the morning of September 11, a Recall representative saw the smoke billowing from the WTC towers. He called his office in Ft. Lee, New Jersey, to track down Recall's couriers in the vicinity. The company has 22 vehicles that criss-cross lower Manhattan and collect backup tapes from clients and place them in Recall's secure vaults serving. At any given time, the single-story vaults hold up to two million tapes with 160 petabytes, or 160 million gigabytes, of data.

As the couriers were being accounted for, Recall employees began activating the clients' disaster recovery plans. Within hours of the attack, they identified, located and began sequencing thousands of tapes. When clients began calling on Wednesday, the company was prepared. Over 30,000 tapes were moved to client-specified "hot sites," enabling the companies to be ready for business again.

Be Prepared

Companies can and should prepare themselves to continue to do business after a major disaster. For many, the terrorist attacks have raised questions about preparedness and ability to rapidly access intellectual information to restore business. Just what steps should you take to identify and improve your disaster preparedness? Here are some basic steps everyone should take:

Determine your data loss tolerance Back up data as often as required to reach the level of data protection necessary to ensure business continuity a minimum of once per day.

Maintain all your backup tapes off-site in a highly secured facility Choose an operation with facilities secured 24/7. Facilities must maintain controlled access; use humidity, fire and climate controls; assure rapid and accurate retrieval data; and provide prompt delivery of tapes to your hot site.

Write a disaster recovery plan Your written plan must include protocols that explicitly state who is authorized to declare a disaster, the predetermined destination hot site and who is authorized to order tapes and accept delivery.

Test your plan Conduct disaster recovery simulations to ensure end-to-end operational continuity. Following the 1993 WTC bombing, Port Authority officials have conducted regular emergency evacuations of the twin towers. And those tests helped save lives on September 11.

Determine mediums of data that should be backed up Data is one thing; documents are another. Consider imaging and indexing hard copy original documents to an online, hosted data service to ensure active files/data are available.

The key to successful disaster recovery is preparedness and execution. Preparedness is a state of alertness, readiness and understanding of what to do when an emergency happens. Execution is making sure that the right steps are taken and that everyone follows the plan. Businesses that suffer a traumatic loss can recover, but they must be prepared for the unthinkable and then act appropriately when the time comes.

Al Trujillo is president of Recall Americas and can be reached at al.trujillo@recall.com