During an average storm season, the chances that a major hurricane will strike within 50 miles of Florida is 29%. As we enter the 2022 storm season, that is predicted to be around 44%, according to Colorado State University’s Tropical Meteorology Project. So, what does this mean for Florida residents and business owners? Preparing for storm season as a business owner is critical, especially in an area so heavily affected by tropical storms and hurricanes like Florida. What that preparedness means will look differently depending on the business. However, for any organization that utilizes technology in their daily operations – it’s critical to think about IT and how to reduce the risk of a storm causing costly, long-term damage this season. Because IT encompasses both physical and digital assets, a good protection and recovery strategy will consider all areas of potential loss or damage and protect against that when at all possible.
Potential Dangers of Storm Season for IT Equipment
Storm season presents several risks for IT equipment and its functionality. Often, storms bring lightning and surges in electricity that can severely damage equipment, including servers and computers. When a surge occurs, it often causes damage to electrical outlets. In some cases, fires occur – potentially damaging nearby equipment if not caught and stopped soon enough. Any piece of technology is vulnerable to fire damage, including phone systems and networking equipment.
In addition to equipment damage, storms also bring the risk of lost data if they reach a server. Employee files, customer information, and other confidential communications are all at risk of being lost in the case of storm damage. In some cases, data is not lost but rather corrupted. Rarely will even a skilled IT professional be able to fix corrupted files. If they are indeed repairable, it will likely cost a great deal of time and money. When planning for storm season, it is important to think both about physical damage as well as non-visible, digital damage as in the case of lost or corrupted data.
Creating an IT Disaster Recovery Plan
While businesses can’t prevent storms from happening this (or any) year, they can be proactive by establishing a plan for preventing or limiting the damage caused by those storms. Damage takes a variety of forms. There is obviously the cost of repairing or replacing equipment. Also, businesses must consider the cost of potential data loss as well as downtime during fixes.
At Kustura Technologies, we partner with businesses to create customized recovery plans that limit potential damage each storm season and throughout the year. These plans make recovery quick and easy so businesses can resume normal operations as soon as possible after a storm. Our IT disaster plans cover visible and digital assets. Visual assets refer to physical pieces of equipment, such as computers, phones, and printers. The term “digital assets” refers to data or information critical to normal operations.
Plans include frequent and secure data backups. Backing up data on-site is better than not backing up at all. However, backups to an alternate location add a layer of protection in the event of storm damage. As data is constantly changing, our plans include data backups every 24 hours. This means that once a day, all business data is backed up and stored in our privately owned level 4 data center. If and when data is lost on-site, it can be restored via these backups – allowing the business to resume business as normal.
Because storms also often cause physical electrical damage, plans from Kustura include repairs in the event of damage. This means repairing or replacing damaged equipment, be that servers, computers, or phone system components. Our team is highly trained and brings years of experience repairing and maintaining office equipment from all leading manufacturers.
The last aspect of our disaster recovery plans is data recovery. In the case of data loss or corruption after a storm, our plans get businesses back up and running fast. We recover lost data and limit downtime.
Combining Disaster Recovery Plans with other IT Services
Disaster preparation and recovery are just one aspect of managing IT within a business. Another important consideration is protection against cyber attacks. Data loss can be attributed to storm damage, but another major cause of it is cyber security breaches. We also offer cybersecurity plans to better protect your business’ data from these attacks. These plans, paired with our disaster recovery plans, offer businesses a pretty comprehensive coverage and a layer of protection against the most severe IT threats.
We always recommend a proactive approach when it comes to managing IT and cybersecurity risks. Protecting physical and digital assets throughout storm season and all year long is incredibly important to business success. These days, it is not a matter of “if” data loss or equipment damage will occur. It is more a matter of “when.”
The best part about choosing Kustura Technologies for one or multiple forms of IT protection is that our plans are customized to each partner organization’s individual needs. We know that IT needs differ among industries as well as among organizations within the same industry. Based on your needs and biggest threats, ew will create and implement a plan to bring you peace of mind – knowing your equipment and data are both protected. If you’re still curious about how our solutions work, we encourage you to reach out. We can discuss your needs and outline the best combination of plans and solutions to keep your business operations running smoothly, no matter the weather outside.
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