Every June, Florida businesses make the same mistake: they add hurricane prep to the calendar and wait for the weather forecast to get scary before acting. By then, you're competing with every other business in the region for generator rentals, IT support hours, and vendor attention.
NOAA's 2026 Atlantic hurricane season forecast calls for 8 to 14 named storms, with three to six expected to reach hurricane strength.1 A below-normal season doesn't mean a no-impact season. It only takes one storm making landfall near Orlando to expose the gap between businesses that planned and businesses that hoped.
According to FEMA, 40% of small businesses never reopen after a major disaster, and another 25% close within a year.2 The variable that separates the survivors? Preparation — specifically, the decisions made about IT infrastructure before the wind picks up.
Here is the checklist every Orlando business should work through now.
Why Does IT Readiness Matter So Much During Hurricane Season?
It is easy to think of hurricane prep as a physical problem: board the windows, secure the signage, send staff home. But for most businesses today, the real exposure is digital. Every hour your systems are down costs money. For small and mid-sized businesses, IT downtime can exceed $25,000 per hour.3
Research shows that 60% of businesses affected by a natural disaster lose all data within the first hour if they do not have immediate backup systems in place.4 And if a business cannot resume operations within five days, 90% will close within a year.2
Hurricane season does not care about your fiscal year. It runs June through November, with peak activity between August and October — right in the middle of Q3 and early Q4. For Orlando businesses, that means your most productive quarter is also your most vulnerable.
What Should Be on Your Hurricane IT Checklist?
Work through each area below in order. Some of these are quick verification tasks. Others may surface gaps that take time to close — which is exactly why you start now.
1. Verify Your Backups Are Actually Working
The most common disaster recovery failure we encounter at Sentry is not the absence of a backup solution — it is a backup solution that stopped working months ago and no one noticed.
Confirm your backup jobs completed successfully within the last 24 hours.
Run a test restore. Backup logs that say "completed" are not the same as data you can actually recover.
Apply the 3-2-1 rule: three copies of your data, on two different types of media, with one copy stored offsite.5 Cloud sync services (like OneDrive or Google Drive alone) do not satisfy the offsite requirement — ransomware that encrypts your local files often encrypts the synced copy too.
Verify that your offsite backup is geographically distant enough to survive a regional storm. A backup stored in another Orlando data center does not help if that data center takes the same hit.
2. Test Your Cloud Failover and Business Continuity Plan
Business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) is not a document you file and forget. It is a plan you test — and test regularly. Best practice calls for monthly file-level restore tests, quarterly application recovery tests, and an annual full-environment failover drill.5
Confirm your Recovery Time Objective (RTO): how long can your business actually operate without key systems?
Confirm your Recovery Point Objective (RPO): if your systems go down at 3 PM, how far back will your data restore to?
Ensure critical applications can fail over to cloud environments without requiring physical hardware at your primary location.
Identify which systems are business-critical versus nice-to-have. Prioritize recovery order in writing.
3. Audit Your Power Redundancy
Hurricane-related power outages in Central Florida can last hours or, in severe storms, days. Your equipment needs to survive both short-duration blips and extended outages.
Verify that servers, network equipment, and workstations critical to operations are on Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS). UPS units buy you time to shut down cleanly — they are not long-term power sources.
If your business requires extended uptime (healthcare, financial services, manufacturing), confirm generator capacity and test it under load.
Review your generator fuel supply and service contract. A generator that has not been serviced since last hurricane season may not start when you need it.
Physically elevate critical equipment off the floor to reduce flood risk, and move hardware away from exterior windows.
4. Document and Distribute Your Communication Tree
When a storm is approaching, you need to reach your team fast and make decisions quickly. A communication tree that lives only in someone's head — or on a laptop that is offline — is not a plan.
Create a printed and digital contact list for all employees, key vendors, and your IT support team. Store copies in multiple locations.
Designate a decision-maker for technology continuity decisions when leadership is unavailable or unreachable.
Confirm your remote work infrastructure: VPN access, cloud applications, video conferencing, and mobile device management should all be tested before employees are working from home during a storm.
Identify and communicate the escalation path if primary systems fail and normal IT contacts are unreachable.
5. Review Your Vendor SLAs for Disaster Scenarios
Most businesses discover gaps in their vendor agreements during a disaster, not before one. Hurricane season is the right time to read the fine print.
Review your managed IT, cloud hosting, and internet provider SLAs. What are their guaranteed response times during a declared disaster?
Confirm whether your internet provider has redundant routing in your area. A single-provider WAN connection is a single point of failure.
Ask your IT partner directly: what is their hurricane response plan for clients? Do they have on-call staff during storm events? What is their process for prioritizing support?
At Sentry, our team pre-positions support capacity and communication protocols before each hurricane season so our clients know exactly what to expect — and know they are not on their own.
When Should You Run This Checklist?
Ideally, you completed a first pass in June when hurricane season opened. If not, now is still a good time — August is peak season. Here is a practical timeline:
Before August: Complete backup verification, BCDR test, and power audit.
August: Finalize communication tree and confirm vendor SLAs.
September and beyond: Recheck after any major system changes, and repeat a restore test quarterly.
The goal is that when a storm is three days out and every vendor in town is slammed, you are not making calls — you are executing a plan that is already in place.
What Happens If You Skip the Checklist?
The answer is not hypothetical. Natural disasters in the United States caused $90.6 billion in damages in 2024 alone.6 Florida businesses face that risk annually. The cost of not preparing is not just the storm damage — it is the data you cannot recover, the clients you cannot serve while you're offline, and in too many cases, the business that does not reopen.
The businesses we have seen weather hurricanes well were not lucky. They had current backups, tested recovery procedures, clear communication plans, and a technology partner they could count on when things went sideways. The Technology Maturity Model framework Sentry uses with every client puts business continuity squarely in the Secure stage — because protecting your operations is not an advanced capability, it is a baseline.
Ready to Know Where Your Business Stands Before August Gets Busy?
Sentry Technology Solutions works with Orlando businesses across 30+ states to build IT environments that hold up under pressure — including hurricane season. If you want a second set of eyes on your BCDR plan, your backup posture, or your overall hurricane readiness, let's talk.
Contact Sentry Technology Solutions at sentryitsolutions.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
How far in advance should I prepare my IT systems for hurricane season?
Start at the beginning of hurricane season (June 1) and run your full checklist by July at the latest. If you are behind, complete it now — the peak of the 2026 season runs August through October.
Does cloud storage count as an offsite backup for disaster recovery?
Cloud sync services like OneDrive, Dropbox, or Google Drive are not substitutes for a true offsite backup. If ransomware or a technical failure corrupts your local data, sync services often replicate the corruption to the cloud automatically. A proper offsite backup uses an independent, versioned system that can restore to a known-good point in time.
What is a reasonable RTO and RPO for a small business?
Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is how long your business can function without a system before it affects operations. Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is how much data loss is acceptable. For most Orlando SMBs, an RTO of 4 hours or less and an RPO of 24 hours or less is a reasonable starting target. Your IT partner can help you set objectives based on your specific operations and risk tolerance.
What is the 3-2-1 backup rule?
The 3-2-1 rule means: three copies of your data, stored on two different types of media, with one copy kept offsite (or in a separate cloud environment). It is the most widely accepted framework for ensuring data survives equipment failure, theft, or a regional disaster like a hurricane.
Do I need a generator if I have cloud-based applications?
Yes. Even if your core applications are cloud-hosted, you still need power for workstations, network equipment, routers, and internet connectivity. Without local power and a working internet connection, cloud applications are inaccessible. A UPS handles short outages; a generator is necessary for extended power loss common in major hurricanes.
What should I do if I have no BCDR plan in place right now?
Start with your backup situation — confirm what exists and whether it has been tested. Then engage your IT provider for a rapid BCDR assessment. Even a basic, documented plan with tested backups is significantly better than none. Sentry can help Orlando businesses build or audit a BCDR plan quickly — contact us at sentryitsolutions.com.
References
1. NOAA. "NOAA Predicts Below-Normal 2026 Atlantic Hurricane Season." National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. May 2026. noaa.gov
2. FEMA / Access Corp. "Study: 40% of Businesses Fail to Reopen After a Disaster." accesscorp.com; cross-referenced with FEMA individual assistance data, fema.gov
3. InvenioIT. "Business Continuity Statistics (2026): Why IT Is Failing the SMB." invenioit.com/continuity/business-continuity-statistics/
4. ZipDo. "Business Disaster Recovery Statistics." zipdo.co/business-disaster-recovery-statistics/
5. Datto. "What Is the 3-2-1-1-0 Backup Rule?" datto.com/blog/3-2-1-1-0-backup-rule/; and "What Is the 3-2-1 Backup Rule?" datto.com/blog/3-2-1-backup-rule/
6. InvenioIT. "25 Disaster Recovery Statistics That Prove Every Business Needs a Plan." invenioit.com/continuity/disaster-recovery-statistics/