Stay tuned for part 4 focusing on Developing a pre-hurricane, active hurricane, and post-hurricane plan for employees next week. Click here to read Part 2: Focus on Securing your business assets
Many companies have reevaluated their approach to how they conduct their business due to the lockdowns of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Creating and properly executing a comprehensive IT infrastructure with redundant business continuity is the most important step to ensure you can “keep the lights on” (pun intended).
While preparing for a natural disaster, such as a hurricane, it’s important for companies to be able to streamline and assess what is truly important to keep operations running. In most cases this means allowing employees to work from remotely. This setup can pose several challenges such as difficulty accessing important documents, not being able to troubleshoot on-premise equipment and the overall productiveness of your business. On-premise equipment might not be accessible for rebooting, maintenance, etc. and can delay your employees from accessing what they need.
Here are some questions you should be asking your management team and/or your IT department:
► Do you have certain industry requirements for your business: security, compliance standards, etc.?
► Who is currently managing your IT infrastructure?
► Do you have multiple offices or locations you need to connect?
► Does your company need to be accessible to your customer base 24/7?
► Do customers need 24/7 access to your office?
► How do your employees access mission-critical data, client files, or documents?
► How much are you spending or would like to spend to guarantee business continuity?
► Post-hurricane: would you still be able to access your data?
► How quickly can your team or your IT staff access your infrastructure?
► Do you have all of your data backed up securely?
In a worst-case scenario, a hurricane could wipe out or flood your office. How can you make sure you pick what is right for your business? Are you properly prepared with what you currently have in place?
IT Backup Checklist
✔ Company backups
✔ Websites
✔ Client Files
✔ Contracts & Legal Documents
✔ Training and On-Boarding
✔ Email
✔ Payroll
✔ Banking Details & Tax Documents
✔ Client Facing Software
Cloud vs Colocation
Cloud
• Multiple locations you need to connect.
• Large teams working remotely.
• Data to be centralized.
• Servers in offices being interconnected from one office to another.
Colocation
• You would like to maintain ownership of your software, but the hardware would be managed off-site.
• An existing IT department or team.
• Strict security standards.
• Compliance standards such as SOC, HIPAA, or PCI.
• You would like your servers in a different region for backup purposes.
What if I need someone to manage all of this?
Outsourcing can provide peace of mind that your IT Infrastructure will be taken care of during a natural disaster. Many managed service providers include guaranteed Service Level Agreements which also provide reassurance that your business is protected.
Managed services combine the benefits of full-service infrastructure and operations management. Managed services providers care for the entire IT framework.
To Download our full Business Hurricane Preparedness Checklist: click here.
Is your business ready for Hurricane Season?
If you would like ColoHouse to help you assess your IT infrastructure or receive a free consultation from our team of experts, please email us at hurricane@colohouse.com.
