Master the Disaster: Get Ready for Hurricane Season

Natural disasters are stressful enough without the added weight of potential business impacts. If you found yourself in Mother Nature’s path tomorrow, would your business float or flounder? The importance of a hurricane preparedness plan cannot be overstated. It protects all the time and effort you’ve put in to provide value for your customers. Here’s what you can do to build a disaster recovery plan today.

Plan

What are your company’s weaknesses? Do you deal primarily in physical products, or is your business 100% digital downloads? The first step in making your disaster recovery plan is identifying your production vulnerabilities. Once you’ve determined how to safeguard any physical processes, your next course of action is to decide what to do with any data you may have. Do you store all of your business or customer information in one place? Be sure that you have a reliable backup in the event that you lose your copy. To make sure that you’ve identified all your breakpoints and how to shield them from failure, check out these other IT services disaster recovery ideas from Ready.gov and the National Hurricane Center

Prepare

Now that you know what needs to be done, you need to decide who’s going to do it. If there are other team members or external vendors that will need to complete tasks for you, be sure everyone has the necessary contact information and that essential communication will be feasible in a storm. What kind of phone or internet connections are necessary to keep everyone connected? Do a dry run of your plan once a year before hurricane season starts to ensure each party knows their role in keeping the business running.

Perform

In the unfortunate event that a hurricane does hit, you’ll know you’ve done your best to prepare. All that’s left is to put your plan into action. Secure any physical equipment by waterproofing it or removing it from the building. If something does go wrong, the contact list you prepared will put you in touch with the right people. When it’s safe to return to your business, ensure that all your devices are still functional. If you do experience any damage, the US Small Business Administration offers loans for disaster relief.

At Torapath, we know that a good disaster recovery plan is a fundamental business asset. It could be the difference between reopening tomorrow and starting all over again. Contact us today and schedule a review of your hurricane preparedness plan to be sure that hurricane season doesn’t take you by surprise.

5 Tips for Increasing Data Security While Working Remotely

Cyber Security, IT

Even though remote work was already gaining popularity amongst tech companies before COVID-19, the pandemic has forced many businesses to adopt work-from-home measures. Remote workers are now as popular as those who operate from the office. According to research by Shred-It State of the Industry Report, these changes come with a greater need for companies to improve on data security. If you have employees who are working outside your office, you need to implement data protection tactics so that you can ensure that your company data remains secure from hackers and...

Keeping it Reel: Tips to Prevent Phishing Attacks

Cyber Security, IT

There's no avoiding the fact that we live in a digital world. We are on our computers, smartphones, and tablets constantly emailing, shopping, and searching the World Wide Web. Because of this, scammers will do their best to find your contact information and target you for illegitimate reasons, also known as phishing. They might try and get personal information like your social security number or bank account, or have you tap on links that can steal your computer details with the click of a button, which is why it's important...

Blog