Hurricane Preparedness: Is your credit union ready?

Many threats face credit unions, but the forces of nature represent a growing yearly risk. How can you prepare for a hurricane? And how can you test your plans to make sure your preparations are sound?

There are three major areas that we recommend shoring up in the case of natural disasters, and more specifically, for major storms. They’ll take only little bit of your time in daily operation, but what’s one stitch in time, if it saves nine later? Remember that in emergencies, it’s far more efficient to act than it is to react.

Foremost, we advise ensuring that you can communicate directly with your entire staff. When calamity strikes, you’ll want to know that you can reach everyone. The easiest way to do this is by maintaining accurate, up-to-date records of phone numbers and contact information. Keeping your employees abreast of what’s happening will pay dividends in the recovery stages of a disaster.

The second thing we urge credit unions to do is to prepare their IT systems. When you back up your systems and data, test their validity. It’s not outlandish to store backups off-site, either; decentralized data is more secure against hurricanes and storms that may threaten the very infrastructure of your branch. Furthermore, keeping an off-site backup handy will allow you to recover your data if you’re forced to relocate during recovery.

 

continue reading »