Preparing for the Unexpected Lessons from a True Story

10 steps in developing business preparedness

There was a knock on my front door. There stood a man from the gas company. He was straight and to the point: our next-door neighbor’s house had a gas leak. The house was full of gas. We had to evacuate immediately. I had barely enough time to grab my wallet and car keys and hustle my family and our dog away. We drove to a relative’s house nearby, and I watched everything unfold on our security cameras.

As I watched the police and fire department manage the situation through the security cameras, I realized I had many vulnerabilities in my emergency plan. Because of the gas leak, the utilities to the entire block, including electricity, were shut off. Yet my generator kicked on – perhaps the only time I wish it hadn’t! A spark could have set everything ablaze. Thankfully, it did not.

Our “bug-out bags,” Get Home Bag, and, in this case, an INCH bag, “ I am never coming home bag.” Our emergency kits were too far away to just grab and go, and these are set up for a tornado scenario. These bags or kits contain everything each family member might need to survive or simply what we would need for an extended period of time being away. I needed to make sure these bags were close to hand, and they were not. Perhaps it would have been wiser to have one already in the car.

One thing that gave me peace of mind was that our digital wallets were secure. We had already backed up everything irreplaceable, including family photos, to the cloud, and these were safe. Important documents are in a safe, and I knew they would survive a house explosion. However, I later learned that the contents of safes are not immune to water damage in the event of a fire. The fire department is going to dump truckloads of water onto your dwelling and everything in it. Needless to say, I grabbed what I could, my iPad included, and we got out of there as fast as possible.

We were allowed to return home in a few hours. The whole block smelled strongly of natural gas. It turns out that the house next door was empty and being renovated. The workers had taken out the gas dryer to be replaced with an electric one. They had failed to turn off the gas! Gas was pouring into the house for the greater part of the afternoon and evening. One spark could have set it ablaze.

It was very interesting to watch the first responders respond through the lens of our security cameras and work through this situation. I watched a fire truck pull in front of my house and then, a short time later, pull back and put a greater barrier between themselves and the threat at hand. I wonder what types of barriers we put in our businesses to keep us safe from the threats we face. I discovered the gaps/ blind spots in coverage I had around my house security camera-wise. I also discovered what worked. When the first responders shut the power down to the block, I was able to continue to watch the scene unfold as my generator kicked in and, within a minute, brought the power back up to my house. I have backup UPS on my networking equipment, so my internet connection never goes down. I didn’t need a lot of backup UPS capacity. I intentionally wanted enough runtime to bridge the gap for the generator to kick in, just like we do when we are designing resilience for servers.

We are grateful for the quick actions of the gas company and the first responders who ensured everyone was safe and sound and who acted quickly to keep us safe.

Preparing for the Unexpected: The Importance of Backup and Emergency Plans

Every year, September is National Preparedness Month, and even though it is no longer September, the best time to prepare is yesterday. The next best time to prepare is today. Whether it is an emergency like the gas leak my family experienced, a hurricane or tornado, or any other natural disaster, having a backup and emergency plan is essential. An IT backup and business continuity plan for an emergency is crucial to ensure business continuity and its data integrity.

In unexpected disruptions such as cyber-attacks, hardware failures, or natural disasters, a backup plan can prevent data loss and minimize downtime. This protects sensitive information and maintains the trust of clients and stakeholders. Additionally, an emergency plan outlines clear procedures and responsibilities, enabling a swift and organized response to crises. Investing in robust IT backup and emergency strategies safeguards the organization’s operations and reputation, providing peace of mind in an increasingly digital world.

How Businesses Should Plan for Emergencies

With the many possible hazards confronting businesses today, preparing for them can feel overwhelming. Fortunately, there are some steps to plan for emergencies that are consistent no matter which kind of emergency you may face.

1. Identify risks: Every business faces risk. However, some businesses face different kinds of risks than others. For example, businesses in the Midwest may face threats of tornadoes, while businesses in California may face earthquakes. Identify and list potential risks, including natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, wildfires, and other dangers, such as power outages, civic disruption, and more. We need to think through the different scenarios
2. Prepare your plan: Ready Business | Ready.gov, a preparedness site run by the United States government, provides numerous free toolkits and plan business continuity technology backup plan we create for your business, and you will have maximum peace of mind.
3. Train and practice: Do you remember school fire drills? Each fall, the fire bell would ring, and the teacher would tell us what to do and where to exit the building. We would practice walking in single file down the hallways and out the identified exit door. This training and practice serves an important purpose. In an actual fire, we would know exactly what to do. Your staff also needs training and practice in preparedness and emergency plans. It is not simply a question of writing a plan and putting it in a file cabinet. You must share it with your staff and practice it so everyone knows what must be done in an emergency. In IT, we call these tabletop exercises a discussion-based session in which everyone walks through their course of action. And we are happy to conduct a tabletop exercise for you. It is greater refresher training for staff and newcomers.

Tips to Create an Effective Business Continuity Plan

Ready to build your own backup plan? Here are some tips for creating an effective backup plan:

1. Assess Your Needs: A Business Impact Analysis should Identify critical data and systems that need to be backed up, secured, and protected. Prioritize based on the impact of potential data loss.
2. Choose the players: Who will decide the plan and who will execute the plan.
3. Test Your Response: An effective way to test your plan is to come back to it after it is written and run a tabletop exercise. You want to regularly test your plan to ensure it can be executed successfully. This helps identify and fix any issues before a real disaster occurs.
4. Secure Your Systems and Backups: Encrypt your backup data and store it in a secure location 200 miles from its source. We have to protect against unauthorized access, cyber threats, and natural disasters.
5. Document the technology response Plan: Create detailed documentation of your backup & security procedures, including roles and responsibilities, to ensure everyone knows what to do in an emergency.
6. Review and Update Regularly: Periodically review and update your business disaster plan to accommodate changes in your IT environment and business needs.
7. Plan for the unexpected: Unexpected outages take us off guard. Plan for your primary system to fail and your resonance to it.
8. Plan for multiple unexpected events: There was a famous story in Katrina where an employee business stored the backup for their servers in the trunk of their car. Needless to say, the business lost its server and the backup as the car was flooded.
9. Have a contingency operational plan: Plan for an outage longer than expected. Most people think IT can just quickly restore from backup. They don’t realize that restoration can take days to weeks to resolve all of the fallout. This is especially true for those without a business continuity plan.
10. Establish a mindset of security awareness and disaster preparedness. While FEMA shows an increase in the mindset of preparedness, FEMA Publishes Annual Preparedness Survey: Trends Show Americans Becoming Better Prepared | FEMA.gov We have a lot of work to do in the preparedness of American Business in both security and business continuity.

a COUPLE of GURUS can guide you through all the steps you need to create an effective IT business disaster plan. Do it now for your peace of mind and for your business continuity.