Hurricane Sandy tests business continuity, disaster recovery

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, which disrupted power, internet, phone and numerous other technical services for millions along the East Coast, organizations are in an ideal mode to check the efficiency or shortcomings of their “in-case-of-disaster” plans.

One factor companies should consider for their business continuity (BC) plans are additional measures to keep their web presence alive during a natural disaster.

On Monday, New York-based internet service provider Datagram lost power due to the storm, effectively knocking out several high-traffic websites hosted by its data center, including The Huffington Post, Buzzfeed and Gawker. Doug Madory, a senior research engineer at Renesys, which provides resources for organizations to better manage internet-based critical processes, told SCMagazine.com that companies should always have a back-up option for their websites.