5 Ways to Prepare for Hurricane Season

Hurricane season is from June 1 through November 30.  On October 29, 2012 the East Coast was hit with Hurricane Sandy.  Many businesses are still recovering and rebuilding from the largest Atlantic Hurricane on record.  Power outages, high winds and flooding affected many areas in New Jersey and New York.

The Small Business Administration and Agility Recovery hosted “Protect Your Business This Season” webinar.  

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Below are five steps to protect your business before a disaster like Hurricane Sandy:

Evaluate Risks

All types of risks exist such as environmental disasters, organized disruption, loss of service, equipment failure and many more.  Assess your company building for risks (inside and outside).  Also, assess business losses during and after a disaster strikes.

Calculate the cost of interruption

Calculating for  “post-disaster”  consists of many different scenarios.  Creating a plan for up to six months of interruptions for your company.  Another major concern is to design a backup plan with secondary vendors in case all primary vendors cannot provide their specific services. 

Insurance Coverage

Consult with your agent and an insurance expert when buying insurance for your business.  Insurance policies vary, it is important to design a policy that best fits your needs.

Create a communication plan

Gather primary and secondary e-mail addresses for all employees, contractors, vendors and customers to put an e-mail alert system in place.  Businesses could also use Social Media to alert public before and after a disaster.

Telework Policy

If a disaster strikes, employees may not have the ability to travel to the office.  Setting up a Telework Policy will grant employees access to work from home.  This policy can be for all employees or specific employees.  

Need help preparing for Hurricane season?

Contact us at 856-745-9990 or click here.

 

5 Disaster Recovery Tools

11971488181629439895barretr_Lifesaver.svg.hiTakeaway:  Five useful tools that are satisfactory for Disaster Recovery.

Quick Disaster Recovery

Quick Disaster Recovery can restrict applications from opening at Startup and re-enabling Windows Administrator tools such as Task Manager and Registry Editor. (Free)

Clonezilla

Clonezilla is compatible with Windows, Mac OS and Linux.  Clonezilla has the capability to perform disk imaging/cloning.

There are two versions available:

  1. Clonezilla live – Backup and restore on a single computer.  (Free)
  2. Clonezilla SE – Backup and restore on 40+ computers simultaneously.  (Free)

Macrium Reflect

Macrium Reflect is compatible with Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8.  Macrium Reflect has the capability to perform disk imaging/cloning, schedule backups, supports RAID and GPT and has a Linux Rescue CD.

There are three versions available:

  1. Home-use Desktop Version (Free)
  2. Pro Desktop Version ($58.99)
  3. Pro Server Version ($199.99)

DriveImageXML

DriveImageXML has the capability to perform disk imaging/cloning, browse and restore images.  Browsing images allows you to restore files, folders or the entire disk image.

There are three options available:

  1. Home-use license (Free)
  2. 5 user license ($100.00)
  3. 100 user licenses ($500.00)

System Rescue CD

System Rescue CD is a Linux rescue disk compatible with Linux and Windows.  This rescue disk can recover data, manage partitions and edit configuration files. 

The System Rescue CD can be modified to your specific needs by adding specific tools or scripts.  (Free)

For disaster tips for your office or home, click here.