Storm season: Is your business data safe?

Storm season brings high winds and heavy rain, which are real risks to your business operations and data security. Even if your business isn’t in a hurricane-prone region, similar severe rain storms and their ripple effects can disrupt services, damage equipment, and cut off access to critical systems.

Many businesses focus on physical safety during storms, but safeguarding digital assets is just as critical to preventing revenue loss and reputational damage from service outages. Power outages, network disruptions, and water damage can put your data in jeopardy if you don’t have the right protections in place.

Let’s take a look at the risks rough winds and heavy rainfall expose your business data to, and how to keep your network protected during storm season.

The risks of disasters to your business data

Severe rain storms can cause more than property damage. They can set off a chain reaction that compromises access to your data and operations, leaving your business vulnerable and reducing your disaster recovery time.

  • Power outages and surges: Strong storms can knock out power for days or longer in rural areas. Sudden power loss can lead to data loss, and when it returns unexpectedly, surges can fry servers, computers, and network devices.
  • Flooding and water damage: Even if your office isn’t on the coast, heavy rains can cause water leaks or floods that damage your servers and backup drives.
  • Connectivity loss: Storms often disrupt internet and phone service, preventing you from accessing cloud-based systems or communicating with customers and staff.
  • Data loss from hardware failures: Physical damage to hard drives and storage systems caused by heavy winds and falling debris lead to permanent losses if you don’t have data backups.
  • Operational downtime: Even if your data survives, losing access to it can stall operations, costing you revenue and eroding customer trust. See how much it could cost you with our downtime calculator.

Unfortunately, damage from flooding and storms is not easily fixed, and the effects can linger long after the storm has passed if you don’t have a robust disaster recovery plan for your business.

How to protect your data this storm season

The good news is that with the right strategy, you can keep your business running and your data safe no matter what the weather brings. Consider the following technologies and solutions to mitigate or prevent storm damage.

  • Uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) – These provide temporary backup power and prevent sudden shutdowns, giving you time to power down servers safely and protect hardware during sudden outages.
  • Off-site and cloud backups – These data backups are more secure, as they are stored at different locations. So, if a storm or hurricane strikes your region, cloud storage ensures data remains accessible, enabling an easy transition to remote work.
  • Automated data backups – Data backups that stay up to date without human intervention ensure sudden weather disasters don’t leave you with old data that is no longer useful.
  • Weatherproof storage – When you’re shoring up protections in advance, don’t forget to reinforce your server rooms, elevate critical devices to prevent flood damage, and store data drives in weather-proof storage containers if possible.

Here are some best practices to minimize your risk this storm season without heavy expenditures.

  • Test your disaster recovery plan: Don’t wait for an emergency to find out if your recovery process works. Run all-hands simulations to make sure your team can restore data quickly.
  • Enable remote work: Make sure your team can securely access systems from home if the office is unavailable. Set up a secure remote working environment while the sun shines so that you’ll be ready when the rain falls.
  • Maintain a detailed communication plan: Have backup methods and defined processes to reach employees and customers if your phones and internet go down.
  • Create unique business continuity plans: If your region is prone to storms, make a disaster plan centered around that risk, and create other plans focusing on other risks that your region or industry is exposed to.

Work with managed IT services providers

While heavy rainstorms and even hurricanes are unpredictable, your preparedness doesn’t have to be. Take a proactive approach to data protection and partner with Interplay for data protection services. 

As a 20-year veteran of the technology services industry, we know IT, and as Washington natives, we know rain. We’ll help you implement storm protections and craft a detailed business continuity plan that keeps your data, revenue, and reputation safe from any adverse weather.