The wide-scale destruction wreaked by Hurricane Ian is a stark reminder that firms need to be prepared for a natural disaster. If a hurricane, tornado, earthquake, blizzard, flood, fire, or gas explosion destroyed or rendered your offices inaccessible, does your firm have a plan in place to ensure recovery of your data and continuation of your operations?

With cybersecurity incidents becoming more rampant, firms are realizing that it is no longer a matter of “if” your firm will be breached, but rather “when” it will occur. Cyber criminals are more sophisticated than ever, with new and evolving tactics employed to steal valuable business information. Of course, the first line of defense is proactive protection, but if those measures fail, how does your firm know what to do in the case of a cybersecurity incident? The best course of action is to have a strong cyber incident response plan.

A disaster in the IT world comes in many forms – natural disasters, ransomware, a cyber breach, and acts of terrorism, just to name a few.  These disasters disrupt normal business and can ultimately have severe and expensive consequences on a company’s reputation and bottom line.

The bad news is many companies think these disasters can never happen to them and don’t take the proper precautions; the good news is that prevention of many disasters is attainable, and planning ensures that when there is a disaster, your company is prepared to get back to business as usual.

Equifax, one of the 3 largest credit agencies in the U.S., last week revealed a security breach which compromised over 140 million individuals’ personal information. While this is not the largest security breach ever in the US, because of the data that was taken, it has the potential to be the most severe, evidenced by the resignation of the company's CEO and the "retiring" of both their CIO and CSO (chief security officer).

To clarify the title of this post, I’m referring not to clouds up in the sky, rather the ones that live here on land, in data centers across the country and around the globe, and store our digital lives, from music and photo collections to critical business information and applications, better known as cloud computing.

Having helped create, implement, manage, and restore backup and disaster recovery plans for dozens of firms, the good news is that a solid backup plan is very doable; the bad news is that it’s not as simple as you may think. Here are some experience shares and reality checks.

Hurricane season is not over yet. Hurricane Sandy is on its way to the East Coast of the U.S. According to the L.A. Times, “it may become the worst to hit the U.S. Northeast in 100 years if current forecasts are correct. Sandy may combine with a second storm coming out of the Midwest to create a system that would rival the New England hurricane of 1938 in intensity, said Paul Kocin, a National Weather Service meteorologist in College Park, Maryland. The hurricane currently passing the Bahamas has killed 21 people across the Caribbean, the Associated Press reported, citing local officials.”