It's an ordinary morning and you're on your way to work when the drive-time shock jock is abruptly interrupted by a news bulletin: A commuter train pulling into Penn Station in New York has been blown up. Twelve hundred people are dead and hundreds more injured.
Just writing this paragraph upset my stomach, but we all need to envision the ugly reality that could befall us should another terrorist attack occur. Thinking about this is difficult, and you cannot help but feel cold-hearted to calculate such risk and think about how it will affect your business. But to not do so is irresponsible.
Our nation is fighting terrorism and we pray for success, but the sad truth is that we remain vulnerable. So prudence mandates that financial advisors plan for disaster. The disaster recovery plan the Securities & Exchange Commission expects RIAs to have is one type of fire drill that you can run. This means ensuring that you have backup copies of data, your vendors have their own backups, and that your business can survive an attack that hits your town or companies you rely upon.
