It’s hurricane season until November and with the Hurricane Irma looming, it’s important to take the proper precautions to protect your business.
The Associated Press called Irma, “the most powerful Atlantic Ocean hurricane in recorded history.” The storm made landfall in the Caribbean Wednesday and is reportedly headed in Florida’s direction and could hit there as early as this weekend.
Irma could bring heavy rainfall, strong winds and even flooding, which could cause your business to lose power or worse. It’s important to listen to local forecasts and advisories so you’re aware of all that’s happening when it comes to this storm.
- Create a phone tree for your organization and stay in touch.Have a plan and contingencies.
- Where will you go Monday morning?
- What do you need to take from your office?
- How will you support your customers, and from where?
- Send out the storm plan to your employees, customers and partners. Include a communications schedule and stick to it.
- Send an update to employees every few hours with what you know and don’t know.
- Send updates to customers with updates that affect them regularly.
- Communicate with suppliers and partners on which you depend to ensure you have what you need to get back to business.
- If your business cannot withstand a period of lengthy downtime, secure a facility further inland for you and your employees or ensure everyone is able to work remotely.
- Hurricanes can put data centers out of commision. Make sure your business data, backups, applications, and server images are stored off-site.
- Your IT professionals will be able to restore systems either virtually via the cloud or at the site where you’re resuming operations.
- If time allows, test the backups of crucial servers before the storm hits.
If you still need more information, click here for our hurricane safety checklist.
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