May 2009 Entries
Will you be Ready - Planning for a Pandemic - May 3, 2009
Orlando Florida -- Despite the growing number of cases involving the swine flu outbreak, deaths to date have been largely confined to Mexico. Cases in the U.S. have appeared in only a few states; only one death has occurred so far, although experts expect there will be more.
In an address marking his first 100 days in office on April 29th, President Obama said, "our public health officials have recommended that schools with confirmed or suspected cases of this flu strongly consider temporarily closing. If more schools are forced to close, we've recommended that both parents and businesses think about contingency plans if their children do have to stay home."
Review your disaster recovery/business continuity plan and then consider the following when planning for the impact of pandemic:
What travel or trade restrictions are you considering or implementing?
What places around the world do not have a high incidence of H1 flu strains?
What step-by-step preparation and action plan do you have?
What organizational response team roles and responsibility have been assigned?
What succession planning actions have been arranged?
What cross-training activities have been arranged?
How easily can employees who have to work from home do so?
What safety guidelines have been prepared?
How is information on the current situation being communicated to employees and clients?
What human resources and facility planning policies and procedures have been established for a flu outbreak?
Next, consider the following guidelines from the Department of Health and Human Services and Centers for Disease Control (CDC):
1. Plan for the impact of a pandemic on your organization
Identify a pandemic coordinator and/or team with defined roles and responsibilities for preparedness and response planning. The planning process should include input from labor representatives.
Identify essential employees and other critical inputs (e.g., raw materials, suppliers, subcontractor services/products, and logistics) required to maintain business operations by location and function during a pandemic.
Train and prepare ancillary workforce (e.g., contractors, employees in other job titles or descriptions, retirees).
Develop and plan for scenarios likely to result in an increase or decrease in demand for your products and/or services during a pandemic (e.g., effect of restriction on mass gatherings, need for hygiene supplies).
Determine potential impact of a pandemic on company business financials using multiple possible scenarios that affect different product lines and/or production sites.
Determine potential impact of a pandemic on business-related domestic and international travel (e.g., quarantines, border closures).
Find up-to-date, reliable pandemic information from community public health, emergency management, and other sources and make sustainable links.
Establish an emergency communications plan and revise periodically. This plan includes identification of key contacts (with backups), chain of communications (including suppliers and customers), and processes for tracking and communicating business and employee status.
Implement an exercise/drill to test your plan, and revise periodically.
2. Plan for the impact of a pandemic on employees and customers
Forecast and allow for employee absences during a pandemic due to factors such as personal illness, family member illness, community containment measures and quarantines, school and/or business closures, and public transportation closures.
Implement guidelines to modify the frequency and type of face-to-face contact (e.g., hand-shaking, seating in meetings, office layout, shared workstations) among employees and between employees and customers (refer to CDC recommendations).
Encourage and track annual influenza vaccination for employees.
Evaluate employee access to and availability of healthcare services during a pandemic, and improve services as needed.
Evaluate employee access to and availability of mental health and social services during a pandemic, including corporate, community, and faith-based resources, and improve services as needed.
Identify employees and key customers with special needs, and incorporate the requirements of such persons into your preparedness plan.
3. Establish policies to be implemented during a pandemic
Establish policies for employee compensation and sick-leave absences unique to a pandemic (e.g., non-punitive, liberal leave), including policies on when a previously ill person is no longer infectious and can return to work after illness.
Establish policies for a flexible worksite (e.g., telecommuting) and flexible work hours (e.g., staggered shifts).
Establish policies for preventing influenza spread at the worksite (e.g., promoting respiratory hygiene/cough etiquette, and prompt exclusion of people with influenza symptoms).
Establish policies for employees who have been exposed to pandemic influenza, are suspected to be ill, or become ill at the worksite (e.g., infection control response, immediate mandatory sick leave).
Establish policies for restricting travel to affected geographic areas (consider both domestic and international sites), evacuating employees working in or near an affected area when an outbreak begins, and guidance for employees returning from affected areas (refer to CDC travel recommendations).
Set up authorities, triggers, and procedures for activating and terminating the company's response plan, altering business operations (e.g., shutting down operations in affected areas), and transferring business knowledge to key employees.
4. Allocate resources to protect employees and customers during a pandemic
Provide sufficient and accessible infection control supplies (e.g., hand-hygiene products, tissues and receptacles for their disposal) in all business locations.
Enhance communications and information technology infrastructures as needed to support employee telecommuting and remote customer access.
Ensure availability of medical consultation and advice for emergency response.
5. Communicate to and educate employees
Develop and disseminate programs and materials covering pandemic fundamentals (e.g., signs and symptoms of influenza, modes of transmission), personal and family protection and response strategies (e.g., hand hygiene, coughing/sneezing etiquette, contingency plans).
Anticipate employee fear and anxiety, rumors and misinformation and plan communications accordingly.
Ensure that communications are culturally and linguistically appropriate.
Disseminate information to employees about your pandemic preparedness and response plan.
Provide information for the at-home care of ill employees and family members.
Develop platforms (e.g., hotlines, dedicated websites) for communicating pandemic status and actions to employees, vendors, suppliers, and customers inside and outside the worksite in a consistent and timely way, including redundancies in the emergency contact system.
Identify community sources for timely and accurate pandemic information (domestic and international) and resources for obtaining counter-measures (e.g., vaccines and antiviral medicines).
6. Coordinate with external organizations and help your community
Collaborate with insurers, health plans, and major local healthcare facilities to share your pandemic plans and understand their capabilities and plans.
Collaborate with federal, state, and local public health agencies and/or emergency responders to participate in their planning processes, share your pandemic plans, and understand their capabilities and plans.
Communicate with local and/or state public health agencies and/or emergency responders about the assets and/or services your business could contribute to the community.
Share best practices with other businesses in your communities, chambers of commerce, and associations to improve community response efforts.
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Department of Health and Human Services.
Influenza kills thousands of people every year (though not at quite the rate currently seen in Mexico). Many organizations are following the spread of the current swine flu as it makes its inevitable way around the world, but we are not sure if it will turn out to be a serious problem. At the moment, the risk to Americans from the H1N1 outbreak is relatively low. Travelers returning from Mexico, in particular, could certainly be infected. The best strategy now is to maintain vigilance, stay informed by listening to comments from the CDC and other government agencies, and update your preparedness plans.
To Learn more and how to do it Right, call: (800) 714-1455 or go to: http://www.cherubnetworks.com/managed-services.php
Cherub Networks LLC is well known for it's flagship product iTGuardian Managed Services which is designed exclusively as a managed or hosted solution to provide our customers with the most cost effective management of their IT infrastructure 24x7. Cherub Networks uses iTGuardian enterprise class technology helping you provide end-to-end monitoring and management of your IT infrastructure over the secured and encrypted Internet connection. This solution helps Cherub Networks deliver an unlimited range of unique managed services, providing extraordinary levels of performance and availability for you, our customer. iTGuardian Managed Services Benefits.
Office in Orlando Lake Mary Longwood Lakeland Tampa Daytona Beach Maitland St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral MSP continuously monitoring healthcare network infrastructure Microsoft patch managing all critical systems Advanced Technology Service Hosting Hosted Data Center Exchanges Sharepoint SQL Event Log Application Backup Firewall Capacity Disk Space CDW Online Backup DR Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS GRID computing on demand storage Cloud We are well known for desktop, server and network monitoring, management, security online backup cloud computing storage archiving VoIP Hosting top 10 Virtualization HaaS SaaS Help desk 24x7 for small medium enterprise SMB SME employees IT as a service software hardware support onsite remote hosted exchange sharepoint fixed cost cutting solutions microsoft hp symantec spam barracuda anti-virus gartner magic quadrant robo soho GRID on demand ibm dell cdw low cost budget HaaS disaster recovery business continuity SaaS capacity cost per gigabyte firewall HaaS SaaS evault seagate iron mountain
Top 10 Reasons SMBs are flocking to the Cloud for Backup and Storage - May 3, 2009
Orlando Florida -- Cloud-based or online backup is a very intriguing backup alternative for remote sites and SMBs. Many cloud providers are currently targeting individuals and very small businesses. But cloud backup is also well suited for remote offices because it can handle dark backups -- automatic backups that don't require manual intervention, says Brian McCarthy CEO and well known expect on Backup and Recovery for Cherub Networks.
If a remote office has a relatively modest amount of data to back up, a cloud service may be a good fit; however, bandwidth may still be an issue. At the least, a broadband connection is required, and consideration should be given to bandwidth requirements for large restores.
Reliability could also be an issue. There have been some well-publicized outages at large cloud providers, but a connection that's performing poorly or not working at all is more likely to be a problem. Let's take a look at some of the best practices for using cloud backup in remote offices and SMBs, says McCarthy.
1. Check your bandwidth. You need to know how much data you expect to back up to the cloud service and if your current bandwidth is adequate, not just to handle backups in a reasonable time, but for restores.
2. Ensure reliability. A cloud backup service, like any online service, can experience outages. Check on the service's record, noting how many outages they've had and how long they've lasted.
3. Tally the costs. Because services have different fee structures, it's important to know how much data you'll ship to their site, how frequently you'll run backups and how often you expect to restore data. Using that information, you'll be able to make accurate cost comparisons.
4. Evaluate access controls. You may want your users to be able to do their own restores, but access to backup data should be controllable to limit unnecessary backups/restores and to protect the data, especially if remote access is is allowed.
5. Make sure your data is safe. Ask what measures the service provider takes to safeguard your data. They should have backup data centers and offer encryption for data in flight and at rest.
6. Stop and resume. A cloud backup service should allow you to stop a backup in progress and then restart it from the point it was interrupted. Having to rerun an entire backup is costly and time consuming.
7. Big restores. If a disaster strikes and you have to restore your entire backup data set or a large part of it, online transmission will likely be impractical. Find out how the service handles these requirements.
8. Protect desktop and laptop data. If all of your company's user data is stored on servers, you don't have to worry about desktop or laptop PCs. But if you have a mobile workforce or allow local storage, ask if the service provider can also protect the data on those systems.
9. Agents and other software. Many services require an agent to run on the servers you're backing up. Find out if the agent will affect the servers' performance or interfere with other applications, and if they can be managed centrally.
10. Continuous or scheduled backups. Some services can back up your servers and other systems continuously, while others do backups on a regular schedule. Make sure your provider offers the types of services that best fit your company's environment.
To Learn more and how to do it Right, call: (800) 714-1455 or go to: http://www.cherubnetworks.com/managed-services.php
Cherub Networks LLC is well known for it's flagship product iTGuardian Managed Services which is designed exclusively as a managed or hosted solution to provide our customers with the most cost effective management of their IT infrastructure 24x7. Cherub Networks uses iTGuardian enterprise class technology helping you provide end-to-end monitoring and management of your IT infrastructure over the secured and encrypted Internet connection. This solution helps Cherub Networks deliver an unlimited range of unique managed services, providing extraordinary levels of performance and availability for you, our customer. iTGuardian Managed Services Benefits.
Office in Orlando Lake Mary Longwood Lakeland Tampa Daytona Beach Maitland St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral MSP continuously monitoring healthcare network infrastructure Microsoft patch managing all critical systems Advanced Technology Service Hosting Hosted Data Center Exchanges Sharepoint SQL Event Log Application Backup Firewall Capacity Disk Space CDW Online Backup DR Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS GRID computing on demand storage Cloud We are well known for desktop, server and network monitoring, management, security online backup cloud computing storage archiving VoIP Hosting top 10 Virtualization HaaS SaaS Help desk 24x7 for small medium enterprise SMB SME employees IT as a service software hardware support onsite remote hosted exchange sharepoint fixed cost cutting solutions microsoft hp symantec spam barracuda anti-virus gartner magic quadrant robo soho GRID on demand ibm dell cdw low cost budget HaaS disaster recovery business continuity SaaS capacity cost per gigabyte firewall HaaS SaaS evault seagate iron mountain