Backup and Disaster Recovery: Storm Tips Refresher

More than 31,000 Long Island, New Yorkers lost power yesterday, according to LongIslandPress.com. Many of these customers are the same ones who were out of power during Superstorm Sandy and were reminded of what it was like to be powerless for weeks. While many of these customers were households, businesses were also affected including the clients of managed services providers (MSPs). If you learned anything from Superstorm Sandy, you learned that you need a backup plan. The end of the world may not have occurred. Yet. However, it’s important that we continue to prepare for any future disasters. Here are some of our tips.

Some of these tips may seem familiar to you, but you may not have implemented them. Our advice: Take the time out of your day today to prepare for disaster.

Have a disaster recovery plan in place — Are you checking in with your clients who put disaster recovery plans in place? Do your customers have disaster recovery plans in place? Save yourself from dealing with extra stresses by working with your customers before a disaster and find out how you can assist.

Create an emergency checklist — Disaster recovery expert Mike Semel, president and chief compliance officer at Semel Consulting, offered some great advice on preparing an emergency checklist, which can be found here. Be sure that your clients have a way to reach you. Give them a cellphone number to be sure.

Plan how you’ll stay connected — Where will you go when you’re disconnected from broadband service and wireless data service? Seek out potential mobile offices beforehand for yourself and your clients. Map out “hot spots” areas to quickly find access to the Internet, when you need it the most.

Prepare your clients with backup and disaster recovery solutions to secure their data before disaster strikes. A client that loses data will not be a client of yours in the near future.