Having been very fortunate over the past two hurricane seasons, business owners need to be all the more vigilant this storm season. Your business hurricane preparedness plan should include three segments: (1) personnel, (2) facility and (3) equiptment/data.
1
Personnel
Each business should develop a notification system for closure and evacuation. Many businesses have established a hotline to alert employees of closure. Email and cell phones are also an effective means of communication.
2
Facility
Next, you should attempt to protect your office facility. This preparation takes place far before the hurricane season. First, ensure that your property insurance includes hurricane and windstorm as covered perils. Also, confirm that you have a separate flood insurance policy, since flood is typically an excluded peril most insurance policies. Next, consider hurricane shutters or some other temporary window covering.
3
Equiptment/Data
Finally, perhaps the most important area of preparedness involves protection of equipment and data. Ensure that you maintain an off site hard copy of your client list, your file list, client contact information, and other sensitive data. In the event of an evacuation of the office, retain the disk/tape backup copies of data from your server and a hard copy of vital client data. Ensure that your server and workstations are away from windows above ground level.
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