Surprise! Disaster Preparations Pay Off

Without trying to overstate the obvious, those who planned for a disaster weathered Hurricane Katrina with success, versus the well-publicized catastrophe which awaited those who did not.

Only two weeks after Katrina swamped the Gulf Coast, Wal-Mart (the largest employer of the Fortune 1000) had located 97 percent of the employees displaced by the storm and offered them jobs at any U.S. Wal-Mart facility. All but 13 of the Wal-Mart stores that Katrina had closed were in operation. The corporation had hauled $3 million in supplies to the disaster zone, sometimes arriving days before Federal Emergency Management Agency supplies.

“Disaster recovery is the same process regardless of the cause,” says Mike Farnham, former Fortune 500 security director. “Corporate-level security maintains the same function and goal: To secure, control, preserve and re-establish connectivity and/or operations.”