Hurricane Preparedness for Businesses: IT Best Practices

This year, experts are predicting a “hyperactive” storm season – with researchers at Colorado State University (CSU) forecasting that we will have 23 named storms, 11 hurricanes and five major hurricanes. While it’s second-nature for Florida residents to prepare their homes for storms, hurricane preparedness for businesses should also be a top priority.

For business owners, preparations should already be underway. But, if you haven’t started yet or aren’t sure where to begin – don’t fear. Our team at Atlas is here to help you prepare your business’ IT for hurricane season.

The importance of hurricane preparedness for businesses

When preparing for a hurricane, the number-one thing people think about is the physical impact to an office or residential structure. Yet, for businesses, disruption can occur through:

• Power outages
• Internet outages
• Equipment damage

Depending on the size and force of a storm, these factors can impact a business for days or even weeks, in some cases. That’s why hurricane preparedness for businesses is so important.

In today’s business environment, IT is at the center of all we do. So, having a plan in place that addresses IT needs before a hurricane hits will ensure that a business:

Avoids unintended IT downtime

When your company relies on technology (and whose doesn’t?), any IT downtime could impact your bottom-line.

Does not permanently lose data

For businesses that rely on onsite servers, flooding or physical damage to the server could result in permanent data loss.

Maintains business continuity

With a proper disaster recovery plan in place, your business is more likely to maintain operations during and after the storm.

Hurricane preparedness for businesses: A step-by-step IT guide

We’ve covered the importance of hurricane preparedness for businesses’ IT. Now, it’s time to create a plan.

Below is a step-by-step guide to ensure your business is ready for hurricane season, based on the expertise of our team at Atlas.

Schedule a team meeting

To best prepare your business for a hurricane, it’s important to understand the IT risks your company faces. Prior to the start of hurricane season, we recommend meeting with your team to discuss the IT challenges you may need to overcome in the event of a hurricane. This meeting should include the CEO, CFO, IT team and/or managed service provider and your office manager.

Topics should include:

• How you’ll respond to a power outage or flood.
• Who on your team does what during a disaster.
• Your current data backup and recovery plan.
• How to respond in the event of a total network loss.

Update your disaster recovery plan

At Atlas, we recommend all businesses have a disaster recovery plan. This should address natural disasters like hurricanes, as well as cyberattacks. Prior to hurricane season, it’s especially important to review this plan and tweak it as necessary, based on any network updates or system changes. 

If you do not have a hurricane preparedness plan already in place, it’s not too late to get started. This plan should include:

• Establishing backups and redundancies for power, internet and hardware.
• Storing or backing up all data using cloud storage solutions or colocation services.
• Establishing a remote work policy if you do not already have one in place.
• Moving all hardware, including servers and workstations, out of harm’s way.

Communicate the plan to your team

Hurricane preparedness for businesses relies heavily on the cooperation of your team. As such, it’s important to communicate the plan with your employees once your disaster recovery plan is established and up to date.

This includes how you’ll address IT downtime and power outages, as well as staffing expectations and time off following a storm. To ensure you can enact the plan quickly, we also recommend assigning employees with tasks on your checklist.

Hurricane preparedness for businesses does not have to be overwhelming, particularly when it comes to safeguarding your IT. When you work with a managed services provider, like Atlas, data backup and recovery, server solutions and network support – as well as cybersecurity and more – are all part of your managed IT services agreement.

Contact us today to learn more about our managed IT services and how we can streamline hurricane preparedness for businesses.