Keeping IT Operational After a Natural Disaster

Whether it’s a hurricane, tornado, earthquake, or flooding, natural disasters show no mercy. If your business is in the path of the disaster, it’s going to be impacted. Knowing how to keep your IT operational in the aftermath of such a catastrophe is important.

Natural Disasters Wreak Havoc on Business

According to the Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA), roughly 40 percent of small businesses are forced to permanently shut down operations and close their doors after a natural disaster hits. Despite this fact, very few small business owners spend time thinking about the environment as a critical factor in their success and longevity.

When you consider that hundreds of natural disasters affect the United States each year – with the frequency and ferocity seemingly increasing on an annual basis – it’s astonishing that more businesses don’t spend time preparing for these events.

If you want your business to have more than a coin flip’s chance of surviving after a hurricane, tornado, earthquake, or flood, you need a plan. More specifically, you need an IT disaster recovery plan.

How to Create an IT Disaster Recovery Plan

Every company’s IT disaster recovery plan will look different. Some will have very specific action steps, while others will provide more general guidelines for how to respond in various scenarios. While specific is best, anything is better than nothing. The important thing is that you get started now, rather than waiting until disaster strikes.

Here are some tips to help you along:

1. Have a Plan for All Possible Threats

Your IT disaster recovery plan needs to be comprehensive. This means having a plan in place for all possible threats – not just one or two incidents. In other words, you need to know how you’ll respond when there’s:

• A power outage from a minor storm
• Flash flooding
• Major flooding
• Hurricane
• Earthquake
• Tornado
• Cyber attack
• Etc.

Initially, these may seem all the same. But when you start digging around, you’ll come to realize they each have their own intricacies. Knowing how to respond to the individual details will allow you to overcome any problem, no matter how minor or major.

2. Conduct a Business Impact Analysis

In order to set your priorities, you need to put each major IT system through a business impact analysis (BIA). In its most basic form, a BIA identifies and evaluates the possible effects of a disaster on business operations.

“Completing a BIA for major IT systems will allow for the identification of system priorities and dependencies,” explains Mark Testoni, president and CEO of SAP (News - Alert) National Security Services, Inc. “This facilitates prioritizing the systems and contributes to the development of recovery strategies and priorities for minimizing loss. The BIA examines three security objectives: confidentiality, integrity, and availability.”

3. Notify Financial Partners

When an individual is impacted by a natural disaster, personal finance experts advise promptly contacting insurance providers and notifying creditors. Many lenders have policies in place where they work with customers who are going through a natural disaster and provide short-term suspension of payments (or some other form of relief).

There are often similar forms of leniency in the business world. You may also find government grants, relief programs, and charitable organizations to ease some of the financial burden. Being aware of these could save you.

4. Prioritize Inventory

One of the biggest goals in the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster is to stop the bleeding. If physical damage has occurred, you want to make sure it doesn’t spread. (This is especially important when flooding is involved.)

Within your disaster recovery plan, be sure to include an inventory checklist that’s ranked by priority. Every piece of hardware, software, and application needs to be accounted for, inspected, and tested. It’s wise to have vendor technical support contact information documented so that you can quickly get your systems back up and running.

5. Define Downtime Tolerance

How much downtime can you afford to absorb after a natural disaster? Some companies lose thousands of dollars per minute, while other businesses can afford to be down for a few days or weeks at a time without feeling a huge crunch.  Being aware of your tolerance for downtime and data loss will help you develop a plan and prioritize actions.

6. Assign Responsibilities

It’s not enough to have a disaster recovery plan in place. For the plan to be faithfully and effectively executed, each individual within your organization needs to have specific responsibilities. Assign these ahead of time so there’s no confusion in the moment.

7. Have a Communication Plan

If you aren’t careful, a natural disaster can lead to chaos. The best way to prevent chaos is by developing a comprehensive communication plan.

“Many times the main communication platforms (phone and email) may be affected and alternative methods of contacting your employees will be needed,” explains Mike Genardi, solutions architect for Computer Design & Integration. “A good communication plan will account for initial communications at the onset of a disaster as well as ongoing updates to keep staff informed throughout the event.”

In addition to communicating with employees and staff within the company, you also need to address external communication in the form of PR. Avoid being selfish and remember that others in the community have been impacted as well. Send out a generic initial statement and then deal with the details at a later time.

Be Prepared for Anything

There’s absolutely nothing you can do to prevent a natural disaster from occurring. Even efforts to reduce susceptibility are often futile. (For instance, you can escape the path of a direct hurricane hit by moving to the Midwest, but you’re still exposed to tornadoes.) What you can control is how you respond.

By being prepared for natural disasters in advance, you can reduce your risk of failure and increase your chances of enjoying long-term success. An IT disaster recovery plan is just a start – but it’s a really good start. Gather your team and begin working on a strategy that gives you the greatest chance of surviving and thriving.