Hurricanes don’t just knock out power—they interrupt revenue, customer service, payroll, and the systems your team needs to operate. And when a storm is on the radar, you won’t have time for “we think we’re backed up.”
Hurricane season has official dates (Atlantic: June 1–Nov 30; Eastern Pacific: May 15–Nov 30)—but storms can and do form outside those windows, which is why the smartest prep happens well before the first warning cone.
Here’s the heads-up checklist we recommend business leaders review now—with your IT team and key vendors—so you can keep operations moving when conditions don’t cooperate.
Hurricane season checklist
1) Know what “can’t go down” for your business
Start with business impact, not servers.
Ask: If we lose power and the office is inaccessible for a week, what must still work?
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Payroll and finance
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Customer communications (email/phone/chat)
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Point-of-sale / payments / billing
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Core applications (ERP, EMR, CRM, project platforms)
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File access and identity (logins, MFA)
This becomes your “Tier 1” list—and it drives every decision below.
2) Confirm your backups are actually recoverable
Many companies discover too late that “backup succeeded” doesn’t mean “we can restore.”
What you want confirmed (in plain English):
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What is backed up (including cloud apps and line-of-business systems)
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Where backups live (not in the same building or region as your production systems)
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How quickly you can restore the Tier 1 list (your real recovery time)
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How much data you can afford to lose (your real recovery point)
If there’s one test to prioritize before the season: perform a restore test on a Tier 1 system and validate it works end-to-end.
3) Make sure someone owns the “storm playbook”
A hurricane plan shouldn’t be a binder no one can find. It should be a short, current runbook with clear ownership.
At minimum, it should include:
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A current inventory of critical systems and vendors
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Who decides when to shut down onsite equipment
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Who handles communications to employees/customers
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Vendor escalation contacts (ISP, cloud providers, application vendors)
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A step-by-step “bring it back online” order
CISA also emphasizes the importance of documented and tested contingency planning as part of disaster recovery readiness.
4) Prepare for power events (because they’re guaranteed)
Storm-related power loss and surges can damage equipment and corrupt data—sometimes even without a direct hit.
Pre-season checks:
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UPS coverage for critical gear (and battery health)
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Generator testing (if applicable) and fuel/maintenance ownership
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A controlled shutdown procedure and the right people trained to execute it
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Surge protection and clear labeling so recovery isn’t guesswork
(If your team plans to disconnect equipment ahead of a storm, that’s fine—just make sure the downtime and restart sequence are planned and documented.)
5) Don’t assume remote work will “just work”
A lot of hurricane continuity depends on your ability to operate from anywhere.
Validate:
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VPN and remote access capacity for “everyone remote at once”
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MFA/authentication resilience if primary systems are down
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Cellular/hotspot plans for key roles
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A backup communications channel if email is impacted
6) Verify where your critical systems actually live
If you use a data center, colocation facility, or major cloud platforms, confirm your resilience assumptions:
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Is your environment dependent on a single region/site?
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Are backups separated from production in a meaningful way?
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Do you know what your vendors will (and won’t) recover for you?
Location matters—flooding risk, access to power, and connectivity all influence recovery timelines.
7) Test, don’t hope
The most “prepared” organizations aren’t the ones with the longest plans—they’re the ones who practice.
Run at least one tabletop exercise:
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“Storm is 72 hours out—what do we do?”
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“Office is inaccessible for 7 days—how do we operate?”
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“Primary systems are down—what’s our customer communication plan?”
NOAA’s National Hurricane Center data also reinforces that most Atlantic activity clusters mid-August through mid-October—meaning you want testing completed before that peak arrives.
A simple timeline that works
60–90 days before season
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Confirm Tier 1 systems + owners
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Review backups and perform at least one restore test
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Update vendor contacts and escalation paths
30 days before season
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Test remote work capacity and ISP failover
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Check UPS/generator readiness
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Run a tabletop exercise
72 hours before a projected impact
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Execute your shutdown/continuity plan (don’t invent one in the moment)
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Confirm communications plan for staff and customers
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Verify backups are current and accessible
Where we help
At MSG, we help leadership teams reduce downtime risk by validating backups, tightening continuity plans, hardening remote operations, and making sure your environment is simple, secure, and scalable—even under storm conditions.
If you want a pre-season readiness check (or a second set of eyes on your recovery plan), contact us today. We’re happy to walk through it with you.