To avoid even a minute's loss, keep disaster-recovery guidelines in place to protect your high-transaction business.

1. Identify the kinds of disasters you're most likely to experience.
2. Prioritize critical business functions and how quickly you must recover them.
3. Pinpoint which operations you can suspend temporarily and which you must maintain.
4. List the business tools you need to perform operations essential to sustaining your enterprise during a disaster and the recovery period that follows.
5. Review communications capabilities for maintaining contact with employees.
6. Establish a location where employees can work off-site and access critical backup systems, records, and supplies.
7. Equip your backup operations site with critical equipment, data files, and supplies.
8. Update your backup and recovery plan at least annually.

Source: eweek [1]