It's been a tough week for advisers on the East Coast. The stock markets have been up and down like a yo-yo. On Tuesday, an earthquake struck, a rarity in these parts. And now a hurricane is set to lash the Eastern Seaboard.
Indeed, Hurricane Irene should give advisers in the EST zone some pause. If you haven't done so already, now would be a good time to go over your disaster recovery plan.
Irene strengthened to a Category 3 storm overnight and is headed for landfall somewhere along the mid-Atlantic coast of the U.S., according to the
National Hurricane Center. The latest projections are showing landfall in the Carolinas, but states as far north as Massachusetts could get hit. Meteorologists said Irene likely will intensify, too. That's saying something, since the Bahamas are currently being buffeted by 115-mile-per-hour winds.
Advisers in the potential path — and who plan to work this weekend or first thing Monday — should start thinking about potential loss of electricity.
But when it comes to your practice, there are other considerations, as well:
> Do you have a backup location from which to work, and one that will have power in the event of an emergency (think backup generators onsite)?
> Is your data backup in a form that you can immediately be up and running? (This is where providers of cloud-based technology can be worth their weight in gold.)
> If you are relying on your own local backups on tape or hard drives, you need to have the requisite software to bring up the data. Most of the time when you're backing up data, you are doing just that: backing up the data, and not the applications that use it. That means it is not enough merely to have a secondary desktop or laptop available, but one that also has all the updated software you use to do your work.
> Read over that fine print. Everyone, including those using providers of cloud-based “software as a service,” need to read over their contracts. Double-check your most important providers about their own disaster recovery plans, processes and guarantees.
Internet service providers and telecoms usually spell these things out in their contracts with you. But if not, ask them to explain their redundancies and backup plans.
A checklist:
In general
Does your firm have an written disaster recovery plan?
Do key personnel have copies of it?
Is your emergency contact information up-to-date?
Have you designated others to take care of operations in case of a disaster?
Have you conducted a recent drill of the plan?
Your technology
Is your backup equipment adequate for your production needs?
Does that backup Internet connection and phone line or leased line provide adequate bandwidth?
Will your backup hardware run your current applications?
Do you have updated software loaded on those machines to emulate your production environment (if you are still relying on locally running software, as opposed to web-based applications)?
Providers you rely on
Does your service-level agreement provide for immediate fail-over (i.e., an automatic switch to a redundant or standby system) or is there a delay to when you will be up and running?
