Have a go-bag / box / tote of essential IT equipment that you or your customers might need . A few lightweight laptops , thumb drives or external drives , easy-to-set-up wireless access points , etc .
Make sure you have up-to-date copies of BCDR plans and contacts both in printed and digital form so you can access them quickly when needed .
And if you ’ re an MSP that ’ s near but outside of an affected zone , reach out to your competitors and pick up the load for them . Yes , you ’ re competitors , but who better to help than a fellow MSP ? Yes , it will cost you money if you do it the way I did , by offering it up at cost , but wouldn ’ t you want someone to do that for you if you were in this situation ?
We ’ ve seen acts of heroism just in assisting people . My best friend swam in fuel and water and other stuff on air mattresses . As soon as he hit the beach and unloaded it , he gave the air mattresses to some people who were displaced and just camping on the beach .
There are all these acts of kindness happening right now . It ’ s pulled us back together as a whole community , as a whole island .
Anne-Marie Lerch , HI Tech Hui , Honolulu , HI
God forbid , you don ’ t ever think you ’ re ever going to need it , but you ’ ve got to have a disaster recovery plan in place in case something like this happens . Because you never know . There ’ s no warning when a disaster is going to hit .
We had one client who had lost their whole store , but they ’ re still in business . It ’ s not stopping them , thanks to cloud first and zero trust . You know , all the famous buzzwords , but it does make a difference . We were already cloud first before the pandemic hit , so when we had to work from home , we didn ’ t miss a beat .
Right now , we ’ re going to our policies and procedures and testing them . What are we going to do in a disaster ? We ’ re testing and documenting and training for all that .
This is a good wake-up call . And even if you already have a plan , go back through it right now . Revisit it and start testing that plan .
For instance , what ’ s going to happen when electricity is out ? What ’ s the plan ?
Where are people going to go work ?
" We had a friend riding on a Harley in town , and he only escaped by driving up the sidewalk . He said his back felt like it was literally on fire ."
- Anne-Marie Lerch
How are you going to still function ?
We ’ re an MSP , and we ’ re a cybersecurity company , so we can never be down . That means we ’ ve got to have generators in place or there ’ s going to be internet and a reliable data center . We have to make sure we continue to function .
So , make sure you ’ re testing the plan , documenting it , and it ’ s being trained across the team .
John Motazedi , SNC Squared , Joplin , MO
This would not have been successful without all the people who stepped in and helped — all the volunteers , Robin Robins , the TMT community , all those people who helped us in their own way — it was incredible . So don ’ t hesitate to reach out for help .
Have a plan in place . Test your backups . Nine months before the tornado , we had an issue with a backup that didn ’ t automatically tell us the backup had failed . So I immediately assigned one of my engineers to spend time every day checking every backup on every server . The first four hours of every day was dedicated to checking those things .
Ultimately , at the end of the day , you ’ ve got to have good people working for you . And we ’ ve got a great staff and we had a lot of great people who came to help . To this day , those eight to 12 weeks after the tornado were probably where we were at our best — anything you can imagine , from logistics to scheduling , planning . I don ’ t know how to really describe it . Everyone was laser focused , everybody knew what they had to do .
It ’ s funny , and I don ’ t want to ever have to go through a tornado again , but that level of teamwork , logistics , coordination , how well we were performing , how happy the customers were , how happy our staff was , etc ., it was amazing . I ’ ve never seen anything like it and will probably never see anything like that again .
Special Thanks To Our Article Contributors
Mikol Westling , Maui Tech Solutions , Kahului , HI
Anne-Marie Lerch , HI Tech Hui , Honolulu , HI
John Motazedi , Former CEO , SNC Squared , Joplin , MO
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