Peak hurricane season is when you find out whether your business can actually work without the office. Not in theory, not in a binder, but on a random Tuesday when the power is out, the internet is down, and your team is asking, “So what now?”

This checklist is about keeping work moving through the most common hurricane problems: power loss, internet loss, and disrupted comms.

Start with the point of the plan

Before you buy anything, decide what “operating” means for you for 24 to 72 hours.

  • Define your essential work. What must happen daily no matter what (taking calls, invoicing, dispatch, patient scheduling, payroll approvals)? Write it down in plain language.
  • Pick your minimum tools. For each essential task, list the one system people must reach (for example: Microsoft 365 email and files, your line-of-business app, your accounting platform).
  • Set a realistic target. Are you aiming for “everyone works as normal” or “we can serve customers and bill, everything else waits”? The second one is often the right first target.

If you skip this step, you end up preparing everything equally, which usually means preparing nothing well.

Internet failover: decide how you will get back online

In a hurricane, you do not control whether your primary ISP is up. You can control whether you have a second path.

  • Have a true secondary connection. A second internet circuit helps most when it is a different provider and, ideally, a different last-mile path. Two plans from the same provider can fail together.
  • Know your failover method. Some businesses use a dual-WAN firewall that fails over automatically. Others keep it simple with a pre-configured backup router they can plug in. Either works if it is tested.
  • Plan for cellular data. A 4G/5G hotspot can keep email and light app use running, but it may not handle heavy file sync, large uploads, or lots of video calls. Treat it as “keep the business alive,” not “business as usual.”
  • Write down who calls the ISP. Put account numbers, support numbers, service addresses, and your circuit IDs in one place. During an outage you do not want to hunt through old emails.

Power: keep the right things running (not everything)

You do not need to power the whole office. You need to power the pieces that let you communicate and recover.

  • Keep your network gear on battery. Put your modem, firewall, and a core switch on a UPS so brief outages do not knock everything offline. Label the outlets so nobody unplugs the wrong thing.
  • Decide what you will shut down. If you have on-prem servers or a NAS, document a clean shutdown procedure and who does it. Sudden power loss is how data corruption happens.
  • Know your runtime. A UPS is not a generator. Confirm how long it will realistically run your essential gear, and what the plan is when the battery runs out.
  • Protect the remote workers too. If key staff work from home, consider a small UPS for their modem and laptop. A one-hour home power blip can be the difference between “we kept going” and “we lost the morning.”

Laptop and device readiness (the part that quietly breaks)

If your continuity plan assumes “everyone can just work from home,” your devices have to agree.

  • Standardise on laptops for critical roles. If someone is essential, they should not be tied to a desktop in a dark office.
  • Confirm local sign-in works. Make sure staff can log into their laptop without needing the office network. This includes knowing their password and having multi-factor authentication set up on a phone they actually have.
  • Check updates before the storm. Do not let your first remote day be the day Windows decides it needs 45 minutes.
  • Make sure chargers exist and travel. It sounds basic, but missing power bricks are a top reason people cannot work from a safe location.
  • Have an “offline list.” If the internet is spotty, people still need phone numbers, customer addresses, and key procedures. Keep a controlled, up-to-date copy that can be accessed offline by the right people.

Cloud access: make sure your work can be reached from anywhere

The goal is simple: your team should be able to work from another location without improvising risky workarounds.

  • Confirm what is actually in the cloud. If your important files still live on a local server, you have created an office dependency. Decide what must be accessible through a cloud platform.
  • Test from outside the office. Pick a normal user (not IT), have them sign in from a mobile hotspot, and confirm they can reach email, files, and the apps they need.
  • Keep a break-glass access plan. If your normal admin account is unavailable, you need a documented way to regain access. This should be tightly controlled and tested.

Phone system routing: keep calls flowing when the office is dark

In a hurricane, phones are often the first thing customers try. Your job is to make sure calls reach a human (or at least a voicemail box you can actually monitor).

  • Decide where calls should go during an incident. For example: ring a call group of managers, then overflow to an answering service, then to voicemail.
  • Set up forwarding rules ahead of time. If your phone system supports it, configure call forwarding and simultaneous ring so calls can route to mobile phones when needed.
  • Use business hours and after-hours routing. If your office is closed unexpectedly, you should be able to switch to an “incident schedule” without rebuilding the whole call flow.
  • Test from a real outside number. Place test calls, confirm caller ID looks right, confirm voicemails land where someone will see them.

Decision rights: who is allowed to do what when it is messy

When something breaks during a storm, the fastest way to lose time is to have five people making five different calls.

  • Name an incident lead. One person owns the call on “are we closing, are we remote, are we restoring, are we waiting.”
  • Define IT authority. Who can approve emergency purchases, authorise vendor support, and request account changes? Put names and backups next to each responsibility.
  • Set communication rules. Where will updates go (text group, Teams channel, phone tree)? Who sends the customer message? Who talks to vendors?
  • Write a one-page runbook. Keep it short: what to do in the first hour, who to contact, and the order of operations.

Run one calm test before August turns into September

A checklist is only useful if it matches reality.

  • Do a 30-minute outage drill. Pick a time, have a few key people work on hotspot data, place a test call through your phone routing, and open the critical apps.
  • Fix the first three failures. There will be failures. That is the point. Address the biggest blockers first, then repeat.

If you want a second set of eyes

If you would like help building a hurricane season IT preparedness checklist that fits your exact tools and roles, the Flexnet Networks team can map it out and test it with you.

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