Hurricane Preparedness — Is your business really ready for a big hurricane?
Is your business really ready for a big hurricane?
We are mid-way through hurricane season – are you 100% confident of your business’ ability to operate if your building was shut down for a day? A week? We have been fortunate in South Florida to not have a serious hurricane since 2005, but it is just a matter of time before we are affected by a hurricane or other event that can take down our offices, systems and ability to communicate with our customers.
Some things you can do to prepare yourself for such an event or avoid downtime are:
* Move to the cloud – Move critical systems such as phones, customer applications and financials to the cloud. This protects your company and helps you continue operating even if your site goes away.
* Backup Plan – have a plan to backup critical data and restore it. An effective backup plan should involve testing it periodically to make sure it works and your staff know how to implement it.
* Know your costs – what does it cost you to be down an hour? A day? A week? Will you lose customers or employees? These are all factors to consider in evaluating the need and budget for business continuity and hurricane preparedness plans.
