Posted by Sarah Rixey on Wed, Jan 25, 2012
As part of our comprehensive disaster recovery planning services, Agility Recovery Solutions sends out a free weekly tip through email. If you would like to receive these tips, please sign up here.
Duck, Cover & Hold On
On February 7, 2012, at 10:15 a.m. Pacific time, over one million people will participate in The Great ShakeOut, an earthquake drill that helps people practice how to safely duck, take cover, and hold on in the event of an earthquake.
Here are a few reminders about the upcoming event:
- You don’t need to be in the Central U.S. or California to participate. The quake that shook the East Coast last year reminded us that earthquakes can happen anytime and anywhere. We encourage everyone to participate in the ShakeOut and practice how to stay safe during an earthquake.
- Engage your family and workplace in earthquake safety. There are some important steps your business can take before, during and after an earthquake. Click here to download Agility's Earthquake Preparedness Checklist.
- After the ShakeOut, share your story. Recount your experience on our LinkedIn page - Collaborate. Share. Prepare. The stories you share may inspire someone else to get prepared for an emergency.
If you have additional questions or would like to talk with a recovery professional about your business continuity needs visit www.agilityrecovery.com or call 866-364-9696.
Posted by Sarah Rixey on Thu, Jan 19, 2012
As part of our comprehensive disaster recovery planning services, Agility Recovery Solutions sends out a free weekly tip through email. If you would like to receive these tips, please sign up here.
Stay Afloat
It has been all over the news, “Cruise ship ran aground and capsized Friday off the coast of Italy.” It’s hard to believe, right? Big, established cruise line. Well mapped, familiar waters. A route the ship cruised every week.
The photos are haunting. Lives were lost, people went missing and passengers were forced to evacuate and leave their belongings behind. Thousands stranded with no money, no passport, nowhere to stay and no way to get home. It’s a scary thought.
This tragic event serves as an important reminder to all. While we can’t prevent disasters from happening, we can prepare ourselves and our loved ones for the unexpected. Put together your personal preparedness plan today. Visit www.72hours.org for tips and resources to help you get started.
If you’re an Agility member, make sure to inquire about myAgility Family. It’s a new Personal Preparedness Planning Tool available for free to all of your employees. Email memberservices@agilityrecovery.com for more info.
If you have additional questions or would like to talk with a recovery professional about your business continuity needs visit www.agilityrecovery.com or call 866-364-9696.
Posted by Sarah Rixey on Mon, Jan 16, 2012
As part of our comprehensive disaster recovery planning services, Agility Recovery Solutions sends out a free weekly tip through email. If you would like to receive these tips, please sign up here.
The Results Are In
As some of you may know, last week we launched our new LinkedIn group, The Agility Community. There have been some great discussions and thought provoking questions focused around disaster recovery and emergency preparedness.
In a recent poll we ask our followers, what is the biggest hurdle you must overcome for disaster recovery planning? And as the results below show, gaining support from upper management remains one of the largest obstacles faced by business professionals today.
While disaster recovery planning is often perceived internally as a complex and daunting task, this doesn’t have to be the case. Watch Agility’s archived webinar on securing management support for business continuity and learn the important steps you can take to break through the clutter.
If you have any thoughts or advice on ways to engage management, please click here and submit a comment. We will be addressing other obstacles including time management and budgetary constraints in future posts. Stay tuned!
If you have additional questions or would like to talk with a recovery professional about your business continuity needs visit www.agilityrecovery.com or call 866-364-9696.
Posted by Sarah Rixey on Thu, Jan 12, 2012
As part of our comprehensive disaster recovery planning services, Agility Recovery Solutions sends out a free weekly tip through email. If you would like to receive these tips, please sign up here.
Resolve to be Ready
The New Year is a time for making resolutions for the year to come, leaving regrets behind and starting fresh. As you are thinking of what goals you would like to accomplish this year, we challenge you to make a New Year’s Resolution to be prepared in 2012.
The following initiatives have been put in place to help you stay on track throughout the year. Bookmark them, set a monthly reminder on your calendar and refer back to them as often as you would like.
- FEMA and Ready.gov have launched their annual Resolve to Be Ready campaign encouraging Americans to make emergency preparedness a priority this year. Click here for a list of monthly preparedness activities.
- The Do 1 Thing initiative reiterates that emergency preparedness doesn’t have to be hard or expensive. Click here for access to the web-based, twelve-month program that focuses on a different area of preparedness each month.
- Agility’s weekly tips are designed to simplify the disaster recovery planning process and keep preparedness top of mind. Click here to refer back to previous tips. If you have any topics that you would like Agility to explore in the future, please submit them via our new LinkedIn user group. It's a great forum for sharing ideas and information.
If you have additional questions or would like to talk with a recovery professional about your business continuity needs visit www.agilityrecovery.com or call 866-364-9696.
Posted by Sarah Rixey on Thu, Dec 29, 2011
As part of our comprehensive disaster recovery planning services, Agility Recovery Solutions sends out a free weekly tip through email. If you would like to receive these tips, please sign up here.
The Best of 2011
Join us this week as we revisit our top 10 disaster recovery tips from 2011. We hope you enjoy taking a look back, and picking up a tip or two that you missed the first time around.
10.) Hurricane Season – Hurricane Irene was undoubtedly the most notable storm this season affecting nearly every state on the eastern seaboard.
9.) Crisis Communications – With the influx of natural disasters this year, implementing and effective crisis communication plan has never been so important.
8.) Holiday Travel – During the hype of the holidays, it’s easy to forget the need to prepare your office for subsequent downtime.
7.) The Everyday Disaster – Natural disasters have dominated the headlines this year, nevertheless, 50% of the disasters Agility responded to were due to isolated events that never made the news.
6.) Influenza Preparedness – Flu season, which started in November, has cost employers thousands of dollars in lost revenue and productivity this year.
5.) Extreme Winter Weather – With winter weather currently at bay, it is easy to forget the record breaking storms and brutally cold temperatures we faced back in January.
4.) National Preparedness Month – September was National Preparedness Month, a nationwide initiative designed to help Americans prepare for emergencies. Thank you to those who participated.
3.) Natural Disasters Hammer the U.S. – Severe weather blanketed the United States this past spring with extreme winds, record rainfall and wildfires, reminding us that no state is immune to natural disasters.
2.) Tornado Preparedness – This past April, deadly tornadoes took the nation by storm, devastating communities, homes and businesses throughout the South and Midwest. Tornado preparedness remains top of mind.
1.) Flood Preparedness – From the Mississippi River flooding to the residual effects of Hurricane Irene, this year served as a constant reminder that floods are not only dangerous, but remain the most common and widespread naturally occurring disaster.
If you have additional questions or would like to talk with a recovery professional about your business continuity needs visit www.agilityrecovery.com or call 866-364-9696.
Posted by Sarah Rixey on Wed, Dec 21, 2011
As part of our comprehensive disaster recovery planning services, Agility Recovery Solutions sends out a free weekly tip through email. If you would like to receive these tips, please sign up here.
2011: Year in Review
It’s hard to believe 2011 is coming to an end. On the disaster recovery front, it has been a historic and wild year.
As of today, there have been 98 presidentially declared disasters affecting 45 states and territories. With an onslaught of twisters, floods, snow, drought, heat, wildfires, and even earthquakes on the east coast, the US eclipsed the record for billion-dollar weather related disasters.
As the year comes to a close and we get ready to ring in the New Year, we find value in reflecting on the events that helped shape us over the past 12 months. Click here to watch as Agility’s President and CEO, Bob Boyd provides a recap of the year and well wishes for a prosperous 2012.
From all of us at Agility, we wish you a safe and Happy Holiday.
If you have additional questions or would like to talk with a recovery professional about your business continuity needs visit www.agilityrecovery.com or call 866-364-9696.
Posted by Sarah Rixey on Thu, Dec 15, 2011
As part of our comprehensive disaster recovery planning services, Agility Recovery Solutions sends out a free weekly tip through email. If you would like to receive these tips, please sign up here.
Power Up
As we look back at the various business interruptions our members faced this year, there is an obvious common thread between them all. From hurricanes to tornadoes, floods to blizzards, the main culprit of business downtime remains the loss of power.
This year alone, Agility responded to over 2,500 member alerts and declarations of which, more than 70% involved a power-related issue.
Powering your office requires more than just plugging in a generator. The wrong cooling equipment, cabling, amps and/or volts can leave you with a real problem.
To prevent a power outage from become an overwhelming disaster, download Agility’s Power and Generator Checklist and start preparing your business today.
If you have additional questions or would like to talk with a recovery professional about your business continuity needs visit www.agilityrecovery.com or call 866-364-9696.
Posted by Sarah Rixey on Wed, Dec 14, 2011
In response to multiple requests to make our recovery tests more transparent and accessible, we have decided to share with you the following test we recently conducted with one of our members.
Read below as Senior Continuity Planner, Mark Norton recounts the testing experience. From the mock disasters to valuable takeaways, learn first-hand about the importance of testing your disaster recovery plan.
At 6:00 a.m. on Monday morning an Agility mem
ber had a pretend a tornado blown through their office building presenting them with obvious challenges beyond the typical mundane Monday. Thankfully no one was hurt in this scenario, however there was no question they were going to need space for their 12 employees. Initially, they were thinking the parking lot would be ideal for recovery, however after hearing our stories of recent tornado recoveries they learned that debris from a tornado would likely block the roads or entrance to the parking lot making it an impossible option for recovery. This became the turning point in the scenario because their recovery strategy was contingent on that single statement (recovery would take place in the parking lot).
Agility has seen many strategies hinged on the assumption that someone or something would be available for recovery; however what if our assumption is wrong. Who do we turn to? Where do we go? What do we do? A suggested planning step for all of us is to TEST our assumptions. We all make them and we would all have a gap in our plans if these assumptions do not pan out.
Thankfully Agility isn’t contingent on anything so we were able to shift gears and share nearby space options for both a mobile office as well as office space for their employees. Another void after the tornado was in their communication plan. Since both phone and Internet access were lost following the tornado, they decided to forward their phone calls to cell phones, but they did not have a fix for their Internet. However, before we focused on finding Internet, we first circled back on the issues of using cell phones as your backup to landlines.
You see, cell phones didn’t work in Joplin and they didn’t work in Alabama. In fact, oftentimes in regional events cell phones typically aren’t good for sending/receiving calls. This is by design as the cell networks aren’t setup to support everyone calling everyone at the same time which is exactly what happens after a far-reaching disaster. Most of us have a good plan for the short-term disasters, but the long-term disasters pose a problem. So again, we want to make sure we all have a Plan B (long-term plan) when Plan A (short-term plan) no longer works for us. The voicemail Agility can setup was a great backup option for them and may be for you as well.
After we had taken care of the phones and determined where the new office place could go, we discussed the computer system they would need and everyone who would be there to set it up. We reinforced the importance of avoiding assumptions around who would’ve, could’ve, should’ve done x, y, z. We wrapped up by discussing a few things that wasn’t on their radar for the exercise:
- Internal & External Communications: Emphasized the importance of using different speakers for different audiences (having someone in charge of communicating to Employees, Vendors, Media, etc.) – we never want to have a single-point of failure or having Mr. Smith speaking to the media
- Keeping your employees up to date around what is going on – things happen very fast following a crisis and your employees should be the first to know what is going on. This can be a challenge when your customers and potentially the media are demanding the same information. Have a tool that allows for quick and easy communications to your audiences - Agility has an Alert Notification System which enables you to send a text message or email to all of your employees which may be one tool to add to your tool belt
- Knowing the various outlets for communication and how they can be updated – you have a large and often dynamic audience to interact with following a crisis so know different ways of reaching these when your traditional outlets of communication fail (email, phones, etc.). Good alternatives may be: company’s Website, radio, television, social media, etc.
At the end of the exercise, we received our greatest compliment, "You and your team were very helpful and I think my organization has gotten a lot out of this exercise. The conversation with you shed a lot of light on gaps in our disaster plan." That is why Agility is here. We believe in a more prepared world and a walk-through exercise is one (of many) steps forward in creating a culture of preparedness.
- Mark Norton
Agility Recovery, Member Services
Posted by Sarah Rixey on Tue, Dec 06, 2011
As part of our comprehensive disaster recovery planning services, Agility Recovery Solutions sends out a free weekly tip through email. If you would like to receive these tips, please sign up here.
What a Year!
This year alone, Americans have witnessed deadly tornadoes, record-shattering temperatures, unexpected earthquakes, severe droughts, dangerous wildfires, extreme flooding and rare October snowstorms.
As the year comes to a close, we invite you to join us tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. (EST) as we reflect on the dramatic events and disasters of 2011. Register here for our free webinar, “Disaster Recovery Stories – A Summary of Events from 2011”.
Topics will include:
- Real world recoveries and lessons learned
- A retrospective of major events that caused business interruptions
- New trends and technology influencing business continuity planning
- Critical items your organization needs to know in order to be prepared
If you have additional questions or would like to talk with a recovery professional about your business continuity needs visit www.agilityrecovery.com or call 866-364-9696.
Posted by Sarah Rixey on Wed, Nov 30, 2011
As part of our comprehensive disaster recovery planning services, Agility Recovery Solutions sends out a free weekly tip through email. If you would like to receive these tips, please sign up here.
The Wrap Up
Today officially marks the end of hurricane season. The 2011 Atlantic hurricane season produced a total of 19 tropical storms of which seven became hurricanes, including one that made landfall.
Take a glance at the 2011 storm-track map. Click here to enlarge map and view details.
Although the 2011 hurricane season has ended, the need to prepare for various disasters remains year-round activity. In fact, it may surprise you to know that half of Agility’s disaster declarations this year were due to isolated, non-weather related events.
With that being said, we encourage every business to prepare for all types of hazards by making an emergency plan and building a disaster recovery kit.
If you have additional questions or would like to talk with a recovery professional about your business continuity needs visit www.agilityrecovery.com or call 866-364-9696.
