Did you know?

Over 40% of all companies that experience a disaster never reopen!
Over 25% of the remaining companies close within two years!

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What should I do?

While every year we hear this is going to be the year and to be prepared, most businesses actually do little or nothing to actually prepare for hurricane season.

When do most business think about Hurricane preparedness? Yes, you guessed it, after a disaster happens and then they are left wishing they had better systems in place to help them recover. This leaves businesses scrambling to figure out how to get their business back up and running to serve their customers.
Here is our Top 10 list of items we see businesses should have done.

  1. Data Backup: (Consistent and reliable) When all else fails, backups are what are needed to restore your business’ data. Whether from a major disaster or simply someone deleting a file.
  2. Offsite Storage: (The room next door does not count) Good chance the reason you need to restore from tape is that there has been a fire or large natural disaster, but my tapes or hard drive backups were in the same room as my server… get those backups truly offsite.
  3. Phone Routing Plan: This happens more often then you think, phone service is interrupted and now no one can get a hold of your business. Devise a plan on how your main phone number(s) can be routed to a backup answering service or route differently into your phone system. There are lots of cost effective solutions to address this problem.
  4. Email Continuity: Can you still send and receive emails if your Email Server, Internet Connection or Building were gone? This is an easy one to fix and cost effective too.
  5. Remote Connectivity: (What do you mean I can’t go in there?) We see it on the news all the time, the building looks fine, but you are not allowed to enter the area. With remote access you and your key employees can still conduct business as if you were in the office.
  6. Internet Service: Everyone is rushing to “The Cloud” and they forget that the Internet connection in their office is now the umbilical cord to those systems. There are lots of reasons as to why your Internet service can get interrupted for extended periods of time. Spend some time and look into cost effective backup Internet connections before they are needed.
  7. Battery Backups: (How old are those batteries) Change your clock, change the battery in your smoke detector. Yes, we hear this all the time, but never do we think to check those batteries keeping your servers up and running to power faults. Batteries will fail over time and then when needed they cause your servers to shut-off unexpectedly which can corrupt data.
  8. Surge Protection: During storms, power surges can reek havoc on electronics. Servers, Phone Systems, Desktop Computers, and Firewalls. A good power surge can cost thousands in equipment and even more in lost productivity.
  9. Insurance: Paying for something you hope you never have to use, otherwise known as Insurance Coverage. When was the last time you checked to make sure your Insurance policies cover your business’ technology hardware and the costs to recover after a disaster?
  10. Put it in Writing: Put a plan together for what you and your employees will do in the event of a disaster. This can be as simple as a phone tree of who to call in a disaster. There are lots of templates on the Internet that you can tailor to your business’ needs.

If you have questions or need assistance with your business’ disaster planning contact us as we have the solutions so you do not have to reinvent the wheel.