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Business & Tech

Businesses Need a Plan to Avoid Disaster If It Strikes

Somerset County Regional Center Partnership offers forum on how businesses can prepare for the worst.

Disaster has not been a stranger in Bridgewater in the last few years and chances are it will return as an unwanted visitor in the future.

That’s why businesses, both large and small, have to remain prepared to meet whatever challenges a disaster may bring. The Somerset County Regional Center Partnership, an organization that focuses on the future of Somerville, Raritan and part of Bridgewater, presented a program on Monday on strategies that businesses — or individuals — can employ to avoid worsening the situation when a disaster strikes.

One of the untold “success” stories in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy last fall was how one of the country’s biggest corporations managed to stay in business by relocating many of its central operations to Somerset County.

Michael Kerwin, president and CEO of the Somerset County Business Partnership,       told the forum in the freeholders meeting room in the Somerset County Administration Building that when the hurricane flooded the lower part of Manhattan, Citicorp moved essentially its corporate headquarters and 1,000 employees to a satellite facility in Warren, Kerwin said.

But chances are your business or home will not have to face such a daunting task. Experts in how to maintain continuity in the business gave advice at the forum on how to get ready for the inevitable disaster by developing contingency plans.

Jhovanny Rodriguez, managing partner and vice president of  Synetek Solutions, a firm that provides computer support to businesses, said that business, or individuals, need to ask themselves a question when developing a contingency plan; “If this happens, what will I do?”

The primary issue, the experts agreed, is devising an alternate strategy to communicate with your employees and customers. In a situation when the power may be out for days, it may be time to return to an older time and keep basic information, such as employee phone numbers and addresses, on paper. If the power goes out, that information can not be accessed by computer, Rodriguez said.

That led to another problem that many businesses have not considered — what happens if the Internet connection is lost. “It doesn’t have to be a hurricane,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez suggested that businesses develop a plan to establish a satellite connection to the Internet, a solution that is literally in the clouds.

Walter C. Hanson, president of ATON Computing in Somerville, agreed and emphasized the need for businesses to back up their data on servers in an off-site center.

For example, Hanson said, before Hurricane Sandy he switched his operations to a server at his home in Cape May.

Hanson pointed out that rules for data collection are different for government than private business. He said that police departments are not allowed to store records in the “cloud.”

”You have to start to plan,” Freeholder Patrick Scaglione said.  “You have to have a plan, even if it’s not the right one.”


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