Severe weather is part of doing business for contractors and energy companies across Texas and the surrounding states. Storms close offices, flood trailers, knock out power and disrupt internet service, often just when customers need you most. Storm response work can also surge, making your own systems more important at exactly the moment they are most at risk.
A short continuity plan for IT, written before storm season peaks, keeps people working and data safe.
Start with what you cannot do without
Identify the systems and functions that matter most during a disruption:
- Communication: phones, email and messaging
- Payroll and the ability to pay vendors
- Dispatch, scheduling and project information
- Access to drawings, contracts and safety documents
- Remote access for staff who cannot reach the office
- Customer-facing and emergency response systems
Decide how long each can be down before the business suffers. That target drives your choices.
Protect power
- Install surge protection on critical equipment, since power surges often accompany outages and restoration
- Use battery backup for servers, network equipment and key workstations, sized to allow a clean shutdown or short operation
- Consider a generator for key facilities, and test it under load, keeping fuel on hand
- Label and document shutdown procedures so anyone can follow them
- Keep devices charged ahead of forecasted storms, including power banks for field phones
Keep connectivity alive
At the office
A single internet circuit is a single point of failure. Consider a secondary connection from a different provider or technology, such as cellular failover. Confirm that failover works by testing it.
In the field
Prepare portable options: cellular hotspots, rugged routers with multiple carriers and satellite terminals where coverage is poor. Store them in a known location, with accounts active and instructions available.
Voice
If your phones depend on the internet, plan for forwarding calls to mobile numbers. Make sure your phone provider can reroute calls from a remote portal that you can reach from anywhere.
Move to the cloud, with care
Cloud-based email, file storage and project platforms keep running when your office does not. But make sure staff can reach them securely from anywhere:
- Enforce MFA, so remote access does not weaken security
- Confirm that laptops hold only what they need and are encrypted
- Test access from outside the office before a storm, not during one
Back up and protect data
A flooded or damaged server room can destroy equipment and data together. Verify that:
- Backups include an off-site or cloud copy, away from the building
- You have tested restoring critical data
- Critical hardware sits off the floor, away from windows and water sources
- Recovery documents, credentials and contact lists are accessible offline
Plan communications
During a disruption, people need to know who is safe, where to go and how to reach each other.
- Maintain an up-to-date contact list with personal phone numbers and alternates.
- Choose a primary and secondary way to reach staff, such as text alerts and a call tree.
- Designate who makes decisions and who speaks for the company.
- Set check-in procedures for field crews.
- Provide a way to share instructions if email or chat is down.
Watch for post-storm fraud
Disasters bring scammers. Expect:
- Fake invoices or payment change requests that cite storm disruption
- Phishing messages posing as insurers, relief agencies or vendors
- Calls claiming to represent utilities or inspectors
- Fraudulent contractors and suppliers seeking emergency work or payment
Keep verification procedures in place even when everyone is stressed and rushed. Emergencies are exactly when call-back checks for payment changes matter most.
Protect temporary setups
Emergency arrangements often weaken security. Staff working from home or alternate sites may use personal devices and unprotected networks. Provide guidance:
- Use company-approved devices and VPN or secure access methods
- Avoid public Wi-Fi for sensitive work
- Keep screens locked and devices physically secured
- Report lost or damaged equipment immediately
Test the plan
A plan that has never been tried will fail in surprising ways. Hold a short exercise before the season peaks:
- Pick a scenario, such as a multi-day outage at the main office.
- Walk through each step: who is notified, how people work, what systems are available.
- Record what broke or was unclear.
- Fix the gaps and assign owners.
A hypothetical example
Consider a hypothetical utility contractor whose office loses power and internet for four days after a severe storm. Staff cannot reach the file server, and the only copy of the contact list sits on it. Dispatchers rely on personal phones. A cloud-hosted contact list, call forwarding and cellular failover would have kept operations running.
Be ready before the weather
Ironfield Cyber helps contractors and energy companies plan continuity, design failover connectivity, verify backups and test recovery. If you have not reviewed your storm readiness this year, we can help you check the basics before the next forecast.