As Florida residents, I’m sure you all are familiar with the term “Hurricane Season”. Being from Alaska, this was a phrase that I was completely unfamiliar with when I first moved down here. I decided to leave the frozen North when winter temperatures dropped to -40°F…for an entire month. After 30 days of mind numbing cold, I marched into the kitchen and told my parents that in the Fall I would be going away to college, not to Oregon like my father had thought, but to Florida.
I arrived in the middle of July. “Ahh” I thought to myself, “no more being cooped up in the house for days on end due to unbelievable weather conditions, Florida is the place for me!”
Then August hit. When I say hit, I literally mean hit. There were reporters all over the News screaming, shouting, pleading and announcing that Hurricane Season was finally upon us.
First it was just rain. So I went out and bought a big golf umbrella. Then came the sirens. So I bought earplugs. Finally, one Tuesday afternoon, an emergency broadcast came on over the radio warning us to flee the area. “FLEE THE AREA?!?!” Panicked, I called my father.
“Where have you allowed your firstborn child to venture off to?!? I have to flee the area! Yes… FLEE THE AREA! Is this some sort of sick payback for not choosing Oregon?!”
Of course it was not payback. Although my parents controlled the checkbook, they did not in fact control the weather – this was simply Hurricane Season… in all its glory.
For the entire month of August I sat cooped up due to the abysmal weather conditions, and because of the storms there was no TV, no Internet, and no electricity.
Braving my first hurricane season was not without its upsides however. Besides finally reading Atlas Shrugged in its entirety, I learned the importance of a good Disaster Recovery Plan, and while most of you probably have a plan in place for your home and family, a plan for your business is just as crucial. Below are some issues you should take into consideration when developing a Disaster Recovery Plan for your business:
1. Invest in Surge Protectors. When lightning strikes, it increases the amount of power that is running through the cables and wires that connect to your equipment. If there is too much power, your equipment will become overloaded and blow up. A Surge Protector monitors the power before it actually goes into your machine, thus preventing equipment failure due to power increases.
2. Invest in a UPS. No, not the United Parcel Service, but an Uninterrupted Power Supply. This is essentially the exact opposite of a power surge – it’s when the power fails. Many companies have generators that kick in so the lights come on in the event of a power outage; however, to keep your computers and network up running smoothly, you’ll need a UPS to ensure power will always be there, even if the electricity goes out.
3. Have an Offsite Data Storage Location. The key here is to ensure that it is truly offsite. If you are backing up your data from your workplace to your home, and home isonly 10 or 15 miles away, then you’re not really going to be that protected because, as you know, a hurricane can wreak havoc for hundreds of miles. So it won’t matter how many backups you have if all of them are within the radius of the hurricane!
4. Ensure Accessibility from a Remote Location. Let’s say you do the right thing and store data at a remote location, but you only can access it from your personal work computer. Well, if the computer gets washed away in a flood, it will take a lot of time and effort to get the security clearances needed to access the data. So be sure that you are not only storing the data remotely, but that you can access it remotely as well.
5. Keep an Assets Record. This is exactly what it sounds like – a record of your assets. Be sure to include the prices of things like workstations, laptops, printers etc. That way, if your office does get destroyed, you have a list of what was inside to present to the insurance company so you can replace equipment as soon as possible.
By having a Disaster Recovery Plan in place for your business, you are helping ensure the success of your company, regardless of what Mother Nature might have in store for Business Owners in the Sunshine State. So be sure to speak with an Aegis Technician to determine if your organization is ready for Hurricane Season, because no one wants a little bad weather to turn into a disastrous day!
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