Axcient, a provider of cloud-based backup solutions, closed out the second month of this year’s relatively quiet hurricane season with a 10-step guide for enterprise disaster preparedness.

“When Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast last Fall, it resulted in $62 billion in damages and economic losses from businesses that were not able to operate because of flooded buildings, power blackouts and damaged communications infrastructure,” said Justin Moore the CEO at Axcient. “However, there were several success stories, where firms had disaster plans in place and were able to leverage cloud-based disaster recovery and business continuity solutions to weather the storm. Dozens of IT providers in Sandy’s path used the latest technology to spin up virtual offices in the cloud to keep employees productive while waiting for primary systems to come back online or be restored.”

The Mountain View-based firm’s most important piece of advice for organizations is to take care of their employees. Workers should be made aware of evacuation procedures, including where to meet and whom to contact after an evacuation, and offices should have a basic emergency supply kit on hand. A recovery plan needs to be readily available via the company intranet, and printed copies can be issued to senior personnel for good measure.

On the infrastructure side, companies have to identify mission-critical systems, apps and data and determine which factors create the most risk. Management must take all relevant weather emergencies into account in order to minimize downtime-related revenue losses and reduce impact on day-to-day operations.

Axcient recommends businesses to assess their IT environments, solution providers and recovery plans on a regular basis. The latter should be reviewed on a quarterly basis to ensure that disaster recovery procedures are aligned with the current company structure.