Lessons from the Nashville Flood: How to Prepare Your Business IT for Natural Disasters

In 2010, record rainfall caused catastrophic flooding in both downtown Nashville and in surrounding communities, throughout the metro area and beyond. Nashvillians remember the eerie photographs of landmarks like LP Field (now Nissan Stadium), the Schermerhorn, and Opry Mills under water.

The flood took a heavy toll on local businesses. According to the Tennessean, somewhere between 300 and 400 local businesses remained closed after the flood, unable to recover from their losses.

Nashvillians understand, then, that natural disasters can pose a heavy threat to businesses. Unfortunately, however, many business owners don’t think past insurance as a safeguard. To truly be prepared for natural disasters, it’s essential that businesses consider and implement strategies to safeguard the continued functionality and accessibility of their key systems and data.

Why Business Insurance Is Not Enough

It’s true that business insurance usually covers damage to property, including computers and IT equipment. But, while policies differ, business insurance may not cover all the losses from operations being shut down due to the unavailability of key business applications and data. So if your business relies on a high level of uptime of critical systems, insurance may not be a sufficient safeguard during a natural disaster.

Evaluating Your Current Safeguards

While it’s likely that your business has some safeguards in place to avert disaster – such as data backups – many businesses forget that true disaster preparedness requires careful planning that takes into account how long they can afford being without access to key systems and data. A data backup may take hours or days to restore. And if a server holding key data is destroyed or fails, you could have to wait until a replacement arrives and is configured to access your data. Most businesses would not find these cases acceptable, as the losses would be too high.

Preparing for Natural Disasters with Disaster Recovery Safeguards Matched to Your Business Needs

To truly make sure your business could successfully weather a natural disaster that threatens access to key data and systems, it’s necessary to work with an IT expert to craft a careful disaster recovery plan. This plan should include procedures for your staff to follow, and it should also involve discussion around technical safeguards that will match your business’s level of reliance on key systems and data. If you need constant, 24x7 access even in the event of a disaster, disaster recovery solutions such as automatic cloud failover—where servers and key applications remain available over the cloud even when local office systems are down—might be necessary. The point is that a high level of strategy and planning is necessary—before a disaster ever occurs—to make sure your business is ready for the worst.

Prepare for Natural Disasters with Managed Services from Affinity Technology Partners

Interested in working with a managed service provider who takes a strategic approach to disaster recovery preparedness? Before, during, and after the Nashville flood of 2010, Affinity has worked consistently with businesses in the area to ensure their continued operation—even in the face of the unexpected. Affinity’s virtual CIOs work closely with our clients to create disaster recovery strategies that mitigate the risk of all manner of disasters—natural and otherwise—from tornadoes to failed hard drives. Contact us today to learn about how Affinity’s approach to managed IT services can reduce your business’s risk and maintain productivity—even during a natural disaster.