SMB
Disaster Preparedness
“Disaster preparedness is not only an issue
of mischievous employees, or even well-inten-
tioned employees doing dumb things.”
Phelps, the company’s president.
The insurance agency experienced what he describes as a
500-year flood following Hur-
ricane Floyd in 1999. “We had
four feet of water all of the way
through our offices,”
he remembers.
“Our server as well
as desktop systems
were all under
water.”
Beforehand, Phelps
had worked with The
SoundSide Group
to develop a disas-
ter preparedness
plan. This included
implementation of Symantec Backup
Exec for data protection and Symantec
AntiVirus to protect the network from
malware. The building was uninhabit-
able, and Phelps and his team relocated
operations to the local funeral home
for six months. The SoundSide Group
retrieved the backup tapes from the
prior night and had Cooper Insurance
Agency up and running in a matter of a
couple days.
Fast forward to early October 2010.
“The weather forecast called for some
rain, but not the torrents we ended up
getting,” Phelps relates. “At one o’clock
in the afternoon on Friday we knew that
a flood was imminent, and we put out
a sign indicating that we would close
at three o’clock. When three o’clock
arrived, while we were worried about
the larger office space, we walked out
and locked the door behind us with full
WATCH Symantec security and data protection solutions enable orion registrar to protect critical information while improving operational efficiencies. LISTEn
CIO nick Joseph explains
how IT has evolved to meet
new business requirements
at Orion Registrar.
Nick Joseph, CIO, Orion Registrar, Inc.
MICHAEL BRUNETTO
the importance of disaster preparedness first hand. “We might
not be in business without the
precautions that we took around disaster preparedness,” reports Russell
