In my last year in business we faced Hurricane Fran that knocked out power for about a week and an ice storm that closed down most of the state for over a week. Disasters can be particularly tough on smaller businesses. Such disruptions hurt sales, as we found out as revenues fell by about 15% in September and then about 20% in January. It also slowed down cash flow for the next several weeks, as many of our customers had to recover from the same events, as well.
In addition to the natural disasters that small businesses can still face, they now have to worry about disasters that are man-made. In addition to terrorism, the NFIB has issued a report that focuses on another man-made disaster that is causing significant economic havoc: computer viruses.
“According to the NFIB Research Foundation’s recent small-business poll, more than one third (34 percent) of small-business owners polled cited computer viruses as a type of ‘man-made disaster’ that had caused harm to their business. Sixty percent of those business owners were forced to pay for professional assistance to exterminate the bugs and restore their systems. The destruction was so severe for 29 percent that they had no alternative but to buy new computer equipment. And more than one-fourth claimed virus attacks destroyed some of their documents.”
A couple of good sources to learn what steps to take as a small business journal can be found in a piece at in the San Antonio Business Journal and at a site called staysafeonline.info.
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