PREPARATION FOR
HURRICANE SEASON
By Robert Hessel
In this regard and others, managed service
providers can be an asset for business
owners who don’t have the bandwidth to
get themselves ready but need to be set up
correctly. After all, as far as natural disaster
is concerned, there isn’t room for error.
Additionally, mother nature doesn’t often
give advance notice, so being prepared
before the threat of disaster is a smart
business move and ensures that you’re
not caught unprepared.
Having a company that understands
the necessary tools and procedure to
protect you during these circumstances is
invaluable. The benefits of utilizing a MSP
in conjunction with existing IT personnel
or in place of hiring someone permanent
are many, but the biggest, aside from being
able to safely delegate the responsibility, is
having the peace of mind that your data
is protected so that business can continue
post hurricane. Source 1 Solutions ensures
that backups are completed daily, and our
24/7 365 NOC team monitors that these
backups are completed without issue.
We use cloud-based storage systems and
we also partner with a Tier 3 hardened
data center, which is practically a fortress.
Prepared for a Category 5 hurricane, Tier 3
data centers are temperature controlled
and protected against the worst kinds of
108 TAMPA BAY MAGAZINE | MARCH/APRIL 2020
inclement weather. In the event of complete
natural disaster, backups are safeguarded
and stored in the cloud with top-level
security and “fail safes” that active across
multiple locations and facilities across the
country. This ensures that your data is safe,
accessible to you when needed, and remote
ready when the time calls for it. And with
100% power in the event of an outage, our
facilities are prepared and ready to assist
you every step of the way.
With storms becoming increasingly
damaging due to a variety of factors,
it is never too late to prepare. Although
hurricane season typically runs from June
to November, inclement weather can occur
at any time and not all disasters are natural.
Businesses who don’t backup their data
and plan in advance leave themselves
vulnerable to hackers and a plethora of other
issues such as having business information
ransomed and held hostage. Such incidents
are not uncommon and can severely disrupt
and endanger your ability to do business,
so the best practice is to prepare well in
advance so that you create an additional
defense against potential issues. 9
EDITOR’S NOTE: Robert Hessel at Source 1
Solutions can be contacted at (727) 538-4114
or by visiting source1solutions.com.
Hurricane season is a notoriously
stressful time of year for
residents of the South and the
Tampa Bay area in general.
While we’ve been lucky in the previous
years, being completely unprepared and
gambling on a calm hurricane season isn’t
a real option for business owners. With
each season seeming longer and more
active than the last, it’s important to plan
ahead and prepare so that business
operations aren’t stalled for weeks during
hurricane recovery.
When planning for natural disaster or
safeguarding your business in the event
of an emergency, the biggest factors to
consider are where your workers will go,
how they will access the data once they
reach their location, and whether or not the
data is fully backed up. Setting up remote
workspaces is no longer much of an issue
since Wi-Fi is readily available, but for
workers who are displaced for long periods
of time, the issue becomes whether or not
they are able to access the data they need
to perform their jobs without interruption.
This is where the preparation becomes
a bit more difficult. Ensuring that every
computer, every backup drive, and every
piece of pertinent information is safely
stored is an enormous responsibility.
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