Flood preparedness for business IT

Understand your exposure

Flood risk is not limited to properties next to a river. Overland flooding from heavy rain, sewer backup, rising groundwater and burst pipes inside a building can all damage equipment. Businesses in basement or ground-floor spaces are particularly exposed, as are shared buildings where a problem in another unit can spread to yours.

Start by checking municipal and provincial flood mapping for your location and talking to your landlord about the building's history. Ask your insurance broker what your policy covers, since overland flooding and sewer backup are sometimes covered separately or excluded. Understanding your exposure helps you decide how much to invest in prevention and recovery.

Get equipment off the floor

Some of the most effective flood measures are also the cheapest. Servers, network equipment and computers should never sit directly on the floor, especially in basements. Rack-mounted equipment should be placed at the top of the rack where possible, and power bars and cables should be raised and secured rather than left lying on the ground.

Avoid locating server rooms in basements or under washrooms, kitchens and other water sources. If you have no alternative, consider water sensors that alert your IT provider and building manager immediately, along with a clear plan for who will respond after hours and how they will get into the building safely.

• Raise all equipment at least several centimetres off the floor
• Keep paper records in closed cabinets above ground level
• Install water sensors near equipment and pipes
• Know where the building's main water shutoff is

Back up offsite

If a flood destroys your office equipment, your data survives only if a copy exists somewhere else. Backups stored on a device in the same room, or even elsewhere in the same building, may be lost in the same event. Keep at least one copy of your backups offsite, ideally in a cloud service or data centre located outside your local flood area.

Moving email and documents to cloud services reduces how much data depends on your office at all. For systems that must remain on-premises, ask your IT provider how long a full restore would take from offsite backups and whether replacement hardware could be sourced quickly. Some organizations arrange the ability to run critical servers temporarily in the cloud while new equipment arrives.

When water is coming

If authorities issue flood warnings for your area, follow their instructions and put safety first. Where it is safe and there is time, shut down equipment properly, move portable equipment and important records to higher floors or offsite, and confirm the latest backup has completed. Do not enter flooded areas where electrical equipment may be live.

Electronics that have been submerged or exposed to floodwater should not be powered on until they have been assessed, since this can cause further damage or a safety hazard. Floodwater is often contaminated, so treat affected equipment with care and document damage with photos for your insurance claim before anything is discarded.

Recovery and lessons learned

Recovery usually means replacing damaged hardware, restoring data from backups and possibly working from a temporary location. Having a list of critical systems in order of priority, along with vendor and insurance contacts stored outside your office systems, shortens the time to get back to work. Remember that damaged drives may contain personal information and must be disposed of securely.

After you recover, review what worked and what did not. Update your continuity plan, adjust equipment placement and confirm your insurance coverage reflects what you learned. Even a near miss is worth reviewing, because the next event may not give as much warning. Share the lessons with staff so everyone knows what to do next time.