Hurricane Season Is an IT Risk, Not Just a Weather Event

Every Tampa Bay business owner knows the drill: stock up on water, board up the windows, charge your devices, and hope for the best. But there's a critical piece that most businesses overlook—your technology infrastructure.

When a hurricane strikes, the physical damage gets all the attention. But for most businesses, the real damage after a storm is data loss, extended downtime, and communication failure. A flooded server closet, a week without power, or an internet outage that lasts longer than your patience—any one of these can cripple a business that isn't prepared.

Hurricane season officially starts June 1, but the time to prepare your IT systems is now—not the week a storm enters the Gulf. This checklist covers everything your Tampa business should have in place before the first advisory is issued.

Why Tampa Businesses Are Especially Vulnerable

Tampa Bay's geography and infrastructure create unique risks that businesses in other regions don't face to the same degree:

  • Power outages that last days or even weeks—Florida's above-ground power lines and dense tree canopy mean extended outages are common, even from tropical storms that don't make direct landfall
  • Flooding in ground-floor offices and server closets—many Tampa businesses operate in flood-prone areas, and servers stored in ground-level closets or under desks are especially at risk
  • Internet outages even when the office is intact—your building might survive fine, but if your ISP's infrastructure is damaged, you're still offline
  • Employees unable to reach the office—evacuation orders, flooded roads, and debris can keep your team away from the office for days after a storm passes

These aren't hypothetical scenarios. They're exactly what thousands of Tampa Bay businesses experienced during recent hurricane seasons. The businesses that bounced back quickly had one thing in common: they had a plan for their technology, not just their property.

1. Verify You Have Real Offsite / Cloud Backups

This is the single most important item on this list. If your office is destroyed, your data needs to survive. But many businesses have a false sense of security about their backups.

File sync is not a backup

OneDrive, Google Drive, and Dropbox are file sync tools—not backup solutions. If a file gets deleted or encrypted by ransomware, that change syncs everywhere. If an employee accidentally purges a folder, it's gone from every connected device. These tools are great for productivity, but they are not disaster recovery.

What real backups look like

  • Server backups—full image-based backups that can restore your entire server environment, not just individual files
  • Workstation backups—protecting data on employee PCs that may not live in shared drives
  • Microsoft 365 / Google Workspace backups—yes, you need to back up your cloud email and files separately. Microsoft and Google do not guarantee recovery of your data
  • Offsite and geographically separate—your backup destination must be outside the Tampa Bay area. A backup stored on a drive in the same office as your server protects you from nothing during a hurricane

How often should backups run?

For most businesses, daily backups are the minimum. Critical systems may need backups every few hours. The key question is: how much data can you afford to lose? If your last backup was 24 hours ago and your server is destroyed, you've lost a full day of work. Can your business absorb that?

The best backup is the one you've tested. The worst backup is the one you assume is working. If you haven't restored files from your backup recently, you don't actually know if it works.

2. Protect Equipment with Proper Power & UPS

Power surges and sudden outages during storms don't just cause inconvenience—they can destroy equipment. A lightning strike or a transformer blowing can send a surge through your building's wiring that fries servers, switches, and firewalls in an instant.

  • Battery backup (UPS) for servers and network gear—a UPS keeps your equipment running long enough for a safe shutdown during a power outage, protecting your data and hardware
  • UPS for critical workstations—employees working on important tasks need time to save their work before machines lose power
  • Surge protection on all equipment—every piece of technology should be behind a quality surge protector at minimum, but a UPS is strongly preferred for anything critical
  • Don't forget ISP equipment and firewalls—your modem, router, and firewall need battery backup too. These are often plugged directly into wall outlets with no protection at all

Safe shutdown procedures

Your team should know the correct order to shut down systems during an extended power outage. Servers need to be shut down gracefully—not just unplugged. Document the shutdown procedure and make sure more than one person knows how to execute it. If you have a managed IT provider, this should be part of your disaster recovery plan.

3. Document Your Network, Accounts, and Vendors

If a hurricane destroys your server, your firewall, and your network switch, could you rebuild everything from scratch? Could someone else rebuild it if you're unavailable?

Comprehensive IT documentation is critical for disaster recovery. Here's what you need:

  • Admin passwords stored securely—not on a sticky note on the server, and not solely in one person's head. Use a password manager or secure vault accessible by authorized personnel
  • Vendor contact list—your internet provider, phone provider, software vendors, hardware suppliers, and their account numbers and support lines
  • Network diagrams—a map of how your network is configured, including IP addresses, VLANs, firewall rules, and how systems connect to each other
  • Equipment inventory—make, model, serial numbers, purchase dates, and warranty status for every piece of hardware

This documentation is invaluable even outside of hurricane season—it speeds up troubleshooting and reduces dependency on any single person's knowledge. But in a disaster scenario, it can be the difference between rebuilding in days versus rebuilding in weeks.

4. Create a Communication Plan for Staff

When a storm knocks out power and internet, how will your team communicate? If employees can't reach the office, how do they access email and files? These questions need answers before the storm, not during it.

  • Remote email and file access—ensure every employee knows how to access email and critical files from a personal device or laptop at home
  • Emergency contact chain—who contacts whom if systems go down? Have a phone tree or group text chain that doesn't depend on company email
  • Cloud phone system or mobile forwarding—if your office phone system goes down, can calls be forwarded to mobile phones or a cloud-based system?
  • Set expectations before the storm—communicate clearly with employees about what's expected during and after a storm: when to check in, how to report status, and what tools to use

A simple one-page communication plan shared with all employees before hurricane season can prevent days of confusion and lost productivity after a storm.

5. Test Your Recovery Plan (Most Businesses Never Do This)

Having backups is step one. Knowing they work is step two—and it's the step most businesses skip entirely. A disaster recovery plan that hasn't been tested is just a theory.

What to test

  • Restore individual files from backup—pick a random file and recover it. Did it work? How long did it take?
  • Restore a full server or workstation—can you rebuild a complete system from your backup? This is dramatically different from restoring a single file
  • Verify cloud data recovery—if you're backing up Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, test restoring an email mailbox or a SharePoint site
  • Time the recovery—how long does a full restore actually take? If it takes 48 hours to rebuild your server, your business needs to plan for 48 hours of downtime

We recommend testing your recovery procedures at least twice a year—once before hurricane season and once after. If you switch backup providers or change your infrastructure, test again immediately.

6. Prepare for Remote Work During Evacuations

When a mandatory evacuation is issued, your employees aren't coming to the office. But that doesn't mean your business has to stop. The businesses that maintain operations through storms are the ones prepared for remote work.

  • VPN or secure remote access—employees need a secure way to connect to company resources from home or wherever they evacuate to
  • Cloud-based file access—critical files should be accessible from any device with an internet connection, not locked on an office server
  • Laptops over desktops—employees with laptops can take their work with them. Desktops stay behind. If your team is still on desktops, hurricane season is a good reason to consider the switch
  • Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)—remote access must be secured with MFA. Opening up remote access without proper security creates a different kind of disaster

The shift to remote work during COVID proved that most office jobs can be done remotely. Make sure your infrastructure supports it so your business doesn't grind to a halt every time a storm threatens the bay.

7. Photograph and Document Equipment for Insurance

If a storm surge floods your office or wind damage destroys your server room, you'll need to file an insurance claim. The smoother that process goes, the faster you can replace equipment and get back to work.

  • Photograph everything—server racks, desktop computers, network switches, firewalls, monitors, printers. Take clear, well-lit photos showing the equipment and its condition
  • Record serial numbers and model numbers—this information is on labels on the back or bottom of every device. Your insurance company will want it
  • Document purchase dates and costs—invoices, receipts, and purchase orders help substantiate claims
  • Store all of this in the cloud—photos and documentation stored on a local hard drive don't help if that drive is underwater. Keep digital copies in a cloud storage account accessible from anywhere

This is one of those tasks that takes an afternoon to complete but can save you weeks of frustration when filing a claim. Do it once, update it whenever you add or replace equipment.

8. What Happens If Your Office Is Unusable for Weeks?

This is the scenario nobody wants to think about, but it's the one that separates prepared businesses from those that never recover. If your office is flooded, without power, or structurally damaged for weeks, can your business still operate?

  • Working entirely from the cloud—if your critical applications, email, and files are cloud-based, your team can work from anywhere with an internet connection
  • Replacing hardware quickly—do you know where to source replacement laptops, monitors, and network equipment on short notice? After a major storm, demand spikes and availability drops
  • Temporary relocation plans—co-working spaces, a team member's home, a partner's office. Have options identified before you need them
  • Managed IT makes this transition smoother—a managed IT provider can spin up new workstations, configure access, and restore data remotely. You don't have to figure it out alone during the worst possible time

The businesses that survive extended disruptions are the ones that planned for them. It doesn't require massive investment—it requires thinking through the scenario and having a documented plan.

The Goal Is Business Continuity, Not Just Survival

Hurricanes are unavoidable in Tampa Bay. They're part of living and doing business here. But downtime and data loss are avoidable with the right preparation.

A proper IT disaster recovery plan means your business can continue operating even if your office cannot. Your data survives in the cloud. Your employees can work remotely. Your communication systems stay online. And when the storm passes, you're back to full operations in days—not weeks or months.

The time to prepare isn't when the first tropical depression forms in the Atlantic. It's right now.

If you're not sure where your business stands on any of these items—or if you want a professional assessment of your disaster readiness—contact us for a free consultation. We'll review your current setup, identify the gaps, and help you build a hurricane preparedness plan that protects your business when it matters most.