Surviving The Storm: Business Continuity Plans

Last October Superstorm Sandy socked the Northeast, leaving a wake of devastation including loss of life, homes and business and complete exposure of the massive infrastructure problems facing our communities. Now, just slightly more than three months later, another devastating storm–Nemo–is bearing down on the same area. The big questions are, “What have learned?” and, “Are we better prepared?”

I would like to think so. Much like no politicianwill let a good crisis go to waste, solution providers also need to look at disasters—natural or man-made— as an opportunity to get closer to their customers, update their storage and backup solutions and make sure they are better prepared for the next occurrence, because it will come.

To be clear, I am in no way comparing solution providers to politicians. Solution providers solve real-world problems every day and the good ones realize they can’t kick a can down the road because eventually they will catch up to it.

But in nearly all conversations that I have had with solution providers and technology directors since Sandy, storage, backup, disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity (BC) have become front and center in their customer communications this year. The continued real threat of cyberattacks and more frequent natural disasters have forced organizations to put DR and BC on their IT priority list. They realize they cannot ignore it anymore and solution providers have to continue to push their customers to diversify their data backup strategies, leverage cloud and hosting environments and have in place clear processes and procedures to ensure business continues once the smoke clears.
And for those of you who have kicked the can down the road, let’s do a quick Sandy recap to refresh your memory of the devastation it left. According to information from a recent event by Property Casualty 360 and InsideCounsel magazine and sponsored by FC&S Legal, Hurricane Sandy:

• Caused widespread power outages to about 8.5 million customers (7 percent of U.S. population)
• Forced governors and other officials to declare a state of emergency and issue mandatory evacuation orders in anticipation of the storm
• Closed major highways, bridge crossings and public transportation in New York and New Jersey;
• Has been called the worst disaster in the 108-year history of the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority

The event was aimed at insurance brokers and legal counsels and, to me, that shows disaster recovery and business continuity is top of mind across all industries and departments. That can only be a good thing. It’s this type of awareness that will keep organizations in front of potential dangers instead of being caught off-guard.

Stay safe, stay protected.

Reproduced from http://www.thevarguy.com, Elliot Markowitz

Find out more about how nology can help your business be prepared to survive the storm http://www.nologynetworks.com/services/file-storage-backup