Hurricane season is in full swing. Hurricane Florence is barreling towards the Carolinas and there are three other systems being watched. Most coastal residents have some idea as to how to prepare their houses and other buildings for hurricanes, but what about your I.T. stuff? Are you storm-ready on the I.T. side?
Back It Up
The most important thing to do is make sure everything is backed up. If you haven’t done a digital backup of all your important files, now is the time to do it. Consider things like Excel spreadsheets, photos, emails, Quickbooks, etc. There are different backups to consider:
Onsite = Onsite backups use devices like USB and removable hard drives. They are easy, fast, and don’t require internet. However, you have to remember to take the backup device with you if you evacuate.
Cloud/Offsite = If you have a lot of data and/or don’t want to risk forgetting your backup devices when you evacuate, you might prefer a cloud-based option. This way, if your office floods and/or electricity goes off, your data is being stored somewhere else and is still accessible via the cloud.
Both onsite and offsite options can be set up to backup your information regularly, which is ideally what you should do.
Failover
Depending on your setup, you may also want to consider a failover system. For example, if you have an important server running at your business that you’re worried about losing power to, you can set up a failover system to take over if/when your main system goes offline. Of course, you’ll need to monitor said failover system, just like you need to monitor backups. If you don’t monitor such things, they may not work when you need them.
You’ll likely want to keep tabs on your employees, so find out their hurricane evacuation plans ahead of time. Some may evacuate out of the danger zone and yet remain in an area that loses electricity and/or cell phone service, while other employees may evacuate far enough away that they will retain both and could work remotely if requested.
We have a hurricane special located here during hurricane season!
If you are interested in our data backup services, please contact us, and stay safe this hurricane season.
