Tips for 2010 Hurricane Season Planning from SunGard Availability Services

WAYNE, Pa., June 2 /PRNewswire/ -- With the 2010 hurricane season predicted to be more active than usual, organizations that take steps in business continuity preparedness will be best equipped to mitigate the impacts a major storm can create.  SunGard Availability Services has outlined seven tips to help organizations prepare to recover quickly from a hurricane and continue operating in the face of such an event.

"Planning for your people is the first step in hurricane preparedness," said William Hughes, director, Consulting Services BC/DR practice, Center of Excellence, at SunGard Availability Services.  "This means not only helping them in the workplace but also preparing their homes and families to keep people safe and productive."

"Whether looking at business or home life, organizations need to remember the lessons from events like Hurricane Katrina or other recent events of significant impact, and plan for an incident where the scope was previously unimaginable.  Organizations should not take anything for granted, make tough decisions about the assumptions their responses are built upon, and prepare for contingencies with a layered defense in order to elevate their level of readiness," said Mr. Hughes.

An "active to extremely active" hurricane season is expected for the Atlantic Basin in 2010, according to the seasonal outlook issued last week by NOAA's Climate Prediction Center – a division of the National Weather Service.  SunGard Availability Services recommends taking the following steps to help improve organizational readiness for this year's hurricane season:

Help people be personally prepared.  The more comfortable and prepared personnel are with their family situations during an emergency, the more likely they will be ready to help the business.  Provide coaching to your staff on the importance of having (i) emergency "go bags" (including water, food, clothing, medication, lighting and more), (ii) pre-planned locations for a family to meet in the event of an evacuation, and (iii) multi-layered communications methods in case wired and wireless voice communications are interrupted.

Make your people the top priority.  The physical safety and psychological well-being of employees need to be the first priority in an organization's business continuity planning.  This preparedness includes clearly defining what precautions a business should take to move personnel out of harm's way, what situations would signify the need to close down, and what people should do – and where they should go –  if the business is disrupted.  It also involves having crisis communications capabilities in place to help ensure a means to inform staff about the situation and their responsibilities, and to enable coordination of the organization's responses to the event.

Take steps to have people ready to respond.  Organizational readiness requires staff be trained and ready to go in response to an incident.  Companies need to focus on communications, awareness and training of the response team, including conducting scenario-based exercises to help staff become effective and efficient in their roles.  Organizations should be so well prepared they only need a business continuity plan for reference or as a guide, not as the playbook, when responding to and recovering from a hurricane.

Reexamine and realign responsibilities.  People and their roles change often in organizations.  Review the staffing assumptions made during business continuity planning to determine if they are still valid.  For example, at a company that has experienced downsizing, individuals may have taken on additional duties, which could hinder their abilities to assume still more responsibility called for in a disaster response plan.

Review your vendor list.  Query your vendors about their business continuity plans to learn their strengths and vulnerabilities.  Your preparedness depends on their preparedness. Understand whether the people and services you rely on will be there when you need them.  Look at the geographic diversity of your service providers to see if they have resources available outside an impacted area.

Don't wait – pre-stage what you can.  If weather reports predict your organization is highly probable to be impacted by a hurricane, don't wait until the last 24 hours to take action.  To minimize risk, proactively move personnel whose business functions can be suspended out of harm's way, shift work processes to alternate locations if possible, and move assets that can be relocated so they are already in place in a secondary location when the event occurs.  Proactive steps and pre-positioning people and other resources can limit your vulnerabilities.

Don't forget the customers you support.  If you are an organization that engages customers in transactional exchanges, review your customer management plan.  Examine how your company will communicate its readiness, address potential concerns and constraints that could affect the customer relationship, and prepare for possible impacts of downtime or lost customer transactions.  For example, your plan should address how you will respond to missing customer orders, and how you will communicate and work with customers to identify and address these issues.  This is particularly important if your organization serves customers on a national or global basis where they won't be directly impacted by a hurricane and may not have anticipated an impact in dealing with your company.

SunGard's Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery practice is dedicated to helping organizations plan for the unexpected, maintain operations and meet regulatory demands.  SunGard consultants have helped thousands of customers prepare for a business disruption with risk assessments, business impact analyses, response plan development, program management, validation exercises and strategies that drive ongoing improvement.  SunGard has available a free, online Business Continuity Toolkit that provides planning and technical resources to help organizations improve preparedness.

About SunGard Availability Services

SunGard Availability Services provides disaster recovery services, managed IT services, information availability consulting services and business continuity management software to more than 10,000 customers in North America and Europe.  With five million square feet of datacenter and operations space, SunGard assists IT organizations across virtually all industry and government sectors to prepare for and recover from emergencies by helping them minimize their computer downtime and optimize their uptime. Through direct sales and channel partners, we help organizations ensure their people and customers have uninterrupted access to the information systems they need in order to do business. To learn more, visit www.availability.sungard.com or call 1-800-468-7483.

About SunGard

SunGard is one of the world's leading software and technology services companies.  SunGard has more than 20,000 employees and serves 25,000 customers in 70 countries.  SunGard provides software and processing solutions for financial services, higher education and the public sector.  SunGard also provides disaster recovery services, managed IT services, information availability consulting services and business continuity management software.  With annual revenue exceeding $5 billion, SunGard is ranked 380 on the Fortune 500 and is the largest privately held business software and IT services company.

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