Since my last article a few things have happened in my own business to remind me that a business is never too small to think about risk management. Since risk management is a term that is thrown around rather loosely, let me make sure that we are all referring to the same thing.

A definition that I like was given by Robert Dilligan, professor of English at the University of Southern California, when he wrote the following: "Risk management is the process used by governments and businesses to protect their assets and therefore, their ability to continue to provide services and/or earn profits."

Put a simpler way, risk management is putting measures in place to make sure that unforeseen bad stuff doesn't "tank" your company. I know this because my company recently had two incidents of unforeseen bad stuff.

First, our business was robbed. The burglars came into our offices and took a lot of high-end computers and technology components. They also took about $80 worth of candy from our company candy box. This single event could have been devastating (of course, I'm referring to the theft of the computers, not the candy - mostly).

Imagine, for a moment, what you would lose if you lost your business computers. Think financial data, customer lists, company reports - and that's just the beginning. Is your business prepared to bounce back immediately from this type of loss?

Fortunately, we had recently put measures into place to secure us from this type of threat. Our systems were locked down with passwords and security protection. We had real-time backups of all of the information on each of the individual computers. And now we have real-time off-site backups of the backups.

Because of the measures we had put into place, recovering from the theft only took a few minutes. But I can't help but think about how disastrous it could have been for us to permanently lose our data or have it fall into the wrong hands. Fortunately, our timing was right and we began to manage that risk just weeks before it happened.

The second potentially hurtful incident for my business occurred recently when a key employee informed us that he had received an opportunity to be a principal in a new business. As such, he gave his notice and was on his way. As an entrepreneur, I couldn't fault him for making the change, and I was happy he had the opportunity. But the truth is his good fortune put our company in a huge bind. We knew we wouldn't easily be able to find a replacement, and no other employee was cross-trained to take over the position. Needless to say, we were not nearly as prepared for this risk - and he even gave us a few weeks' notice.

Do you have employees who are critical to your success? Imagine if one day they quit or, worse, something happened to them that made them unavailable to you. Would you be able to recover quickly enough to ensure that it wasn't a major blow to your business?

There are a lot of risks that we haven't realized yet as a company (and yes, I'm knocking on wood as I write that). Hopefully, we won't ever have to deal with losses from fire, employee sabotage or computer hackers. But we are thinking about these risks a lot more these days. As such, our company is more secure, more redundant and more insured than it has ever been.

Take a few minutes to think about where your business is exposed. If there are events that could put your business out of business, then I would suggest you take a serious look - sooner rather than later - at managing these risks.