Talk about a storm surge. As of mid-September, the U.S. already had recorded 20 billion-dollar weather and climate disaster events this year, inflicting $53 billion in damage, according to government estimates. Then came Milton and Helene, two huge hurricanes that are each expected to add at least $50 billion to that figure, turning 2024 into a particularly damaging one for the businesses, communities and families that were impacted.
Some storm-related losses are immeasurable. But the most significant quantifiable losses often result from lost productivity, sales and revenue caused by disruption to business operations—and to connectivity and communications in particular.
As heavily as businesses today depend on a digital infrastructure to stay connected with customers, suppliers, the public at large and, of course, their own employees and teams, any kind of downtime can take a huge toll. One recent estimate put the cost of downtime at $9,000 per minute for large organizations and $5 million per hour for higher-risk enterprises in industries like finance and healthcare. An analysis from IBM pegged the average revenue impact of an unplanned application outage for a large enterprise at more than $400,000 per hour.
As frequent, widespread, unpredictable and costly as extreme weather events have become in our changing climate, the imperative for businesses is clear: Take measures now to prepare and protect your operations, critical infrastructure, communications systems and data or risk significant and perhaps irreparable damage to your company’s hard and soft assets.
As for where to focus those measures, the following three areas are foundational to preserving business continuity:
Nowadays, businesses are expected to be in always-on mode. Having a network that’s resilient, flexible and powerful enough to keep your organization and employees connected and operating 24/7 when disaster strikes is a non-negotiable for most organizations.
The network has to be accessible and able to support all the apps your company and employees need, wherever they happen to be working (many may need to work remotely in the aftermath of a disaster). This level of reliability and resilience is tough to come by if you’re relying on legacy network infrastructure such as MPLS and on-premises hardware, which often have a single point of failure, leaving an organization especially vulnerable.
The right move here could be to shift your network to the cloud. Many organizations today are moving to high-speed fiber internet services or even to a cloud-based software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN), which can bounce between broadband, fiber optic and Ethernet in real time to preserve connectivity and keep apps running. These solutions excel at supporting a remote (or hybrid) work environment and protect all the edges of a network, as well as the users connected to it. What’s more, housing your network in the cloud means you won’t be putting network hardware at risk.
If your organization runs a lean IT team or lacks IT resources, it also could be worth considering a managed cloud network service that packages SD-WAN with network management, including monitoring, updating, troubleshooting and rapid response during a crisis. With a managed network service, a third-party expert assumes responsibility for keeping the network functioning, so your IT team can focus on other pressing issues.
Cyber-attackers prey on organizations when they’re at their most vulnerable, such as during or after a weather-related disaster. A new report calls this phenomenon a “compound physical-cyber threat” and warns that a cyberattack purposely timed with a weather disaster could have exaggerated negative consequences on a business.
Whatever the timing, a cyberattack can be financially devastating for a business, with the average cost of a data breach approaching $4.9 million. In a landscape as threatening as this, a business’s best counter is to deploy defenses that are as sophisticated and persistent as the would-be attackers themselves.
As a first step in that direction, conduct a risk assessment that sizes up the state of your company’s cyber defenses. Then, take steps to address any vulnerabilities identified in the assessment. One of the most common red flags to watch for is a reliance on a patchwork of security platforms, patches, policies, hardware and software, which can create readily exploitable gaps.
Closing those gaps starts with deploying security measures like a next-generation firewall, perhaps in tandem with solutions like zero trust network access (ZTNA) and a cloud access security broker (CASB). If your assessment suggests you need a more sophisticated approach, then consider a cloud-based security solution like SASE (secure access service edge) or SSE (security service edge), which converge multiple security layers within a single software stack that secures all endpoints, users and applications on a network against phishing, malware, ransomware and other threats.
The third foundational piece to preserve business continuity during and after a weather disaster is a unified communications platform. Here again, your best option may reside in the cloud. Unlike PBX phone systems, VoIP services and other vulnerable, old-school technologies, unified communications as a service (UCaaS) enables organizations to keep multiple communications channels (voice, video, messaging, etc.) open with customers, suppliers, employees and other parties, even during weather-related outages. Keeping those channels open is particularly important during and after a weather disaster so a business can stay engaged with customers and suppliers, and keep employees productive and connected with their teams.
Once you’ve put these pieces in place, it’s important to ensure they will work as intended. Conduct a stress-test of your network and cybersecurity systems by simulating a disaster and cyberattack (with simulation software or tools available in the marketplace) to identify gaps or weaknesses. Then promptly move to address those vulnerabilities—before the next weather-related disaster or cyberattack takes aim at your business.
Michael Flannery is president of Windstream Enterprise, which provides high-performance, cloud-enabled connectivity, communications and security solutions to small, midsized and enterprise businesses. https://www.windstreamenterprise.com/
