Straight Edge President Douglass Miller looks back on Hurricane Harvey and discusses a few take-aways that can protect businesses from risking the same losses in future natural disasters.
It has been 4 years since Hurricane Harvey hit Texas in 2017. This event is a stark reminder of how sudden a hurricane can come and how vital secure data backups and continuity plans are for a business. Harvey became a tropical depression on August 17, then into a hurricane on August 24, and continued to quickly strengthen over the next day, ultimately reaching peak intensity as a Category 4 hurricane. This was the costliest natural disaster recording in Texas at the time.
During any natural disaster, you have other important things to worry about like your home and family and even your evacuation plan. You don’t have the time to worry over your business’s important files and data too in these kinds of situations. In this blog, we will discuss how specific industries were affected and how you can easily protect your data.
What Industries Were Hit By Hurricane Harvey?
Hurricane Harvey put a lot of business owners in situations where they dealt with downtime, loss of power, and damage to their business.
Comptroller economists used a Regional Economic Models Inc. (REMI) model based on Texas’ 24 COG regions to examine economic activity after the hurricane. Data gathered from REMI provided an estimate of how long specific industries were closed.
- Medical care facilities had an average downtime of 4 days from Hurricane Harvey
- Manufacturing and oil-and-gas production were down for 2 weeks
- All other industries had average of 1 week down
Gartner research shows that 43 percent of enterprises that experience a substantial loss of business-related data, never resume business operations again. Another 51 percent of those that do manage to re-open their doors after a major loss of data, close within the next two years after an incident.
3-2-1 Backup Plan To Prepare For Future Disaster
Your company’s data security is essential, and we know you want peace of mind and efficiency if you ever have your data lost. That is why we always recommend a 3-2-1 backup plan. What is the 3-2-1 backup plan?
- 3 Copies of Your Data
- Keep the Backed-Up Data on 2 Different Storage Types
- Keep at Least One Copy of the Data Offsite
Get Your Plan In Place Today And Leave Any Worries Behind
Straight Edge Technology puts plans and procedures in place for their clients to mitigate any data loss or other negative outcomes that could arise from a natural disaster, like Hurricane Harvey. It’s still hurricane season so it’s not too late to properly create a business continuity plan and implement a data backup plan. We help businesses plan out every part of their technology for events like this. Reach out to our team today to prepare for any disaster!