From Forecast to Recovery: An Information Governance Checklist for Hurricane Season
In July of 2024 Hurricane Beryl made landfall in Houston, Texas. Within two weeks of the storm, 56% of businesses in the metro area reported weather-related monetary losses. Houston business owners learned firsthand that hurricanes threaten more than buildings and infrastructure. They also test how quickly your organization can locate, retrieve, protect, and manage information when operations shift unexpectedly.
Storm damage, power outages, flooding, and remote work disruptions can interrupt access to the records that support payroll, customer service, compliance, legal response, and financial recovery. Unfortunately, organizations often discover gaps in their retention policies, retrieval workflows, or legacy systems only after a major disruption creates urgency.
A strong information governance program improves access to information and provides greater visibility when disasters, like hurricanes, threaten business operations. Seasonal hurricane preparedness provides a useful checkpoint for reviewing how information moves through your organization and whether employees can access what they need during a disruption.
Start by looking at the records your organization keeps across departments and asking a simple question: do current retention schedules still match the way people work? In many organizations, files end up stored in multiple locations, older records remain in shared drives for years, and teams create their own informal storage habits over time, habits that create compliance and operational risks.
A good first step is to review retention policies alongside department leaders and compare them against current business requirements, legal obligations, and employee workflows. Pay close attention to records stored across cloud platforms, offsite storage, shared drives, and departmental systems.
This process doesn’t need to happen all at once. Many organizations start by focusing on high-volume departments or records tied to compliance, finance, HR, or customer operations. Even small updates can improve business continuity by reducing duplicate files, eliminating outdated material, and helping employees locate current information more efficiently.
Some records carry more operational weight than others. Insurance documentation, payroll records, contracts, tax files, employee information, customer agreements, and compliance records often become immediate priorities after a severe weather event.
The best way to prepare for a disruption is to ensure visibility into what records are most vital, where those records are stored, and how they move through the information management lifecycle.
A current inventory of the most important records helps teams respond faster when offices close or systems go offline. Your organization should identify:
Physical records deserve close review before hurricane season. Files stored in low-lying offices, overcrowded storage rooms, or unsecured facilities face greater risk of flooding and storm damage.
Despite what you might expect, digital records require a similar level of attention. Organizations should confirm that operationally important information remains searchable, organized, and accessible across systems.
If your organization already uses cloud storage, offsite records storage, or digital delivery tools, prepping for hurricane season is a good time to test how well those systems work under pressure.
To test accessibility, walk through the process yourself before an emergency happens. Make sure employees can still retrieve the records they need if they’re working from home or another office location. Check user permissions, authentication requirements, retrieval response times, emergency contact lists, and backup communication procedures. If something feels confusing during a test run, it will become even more difficult during an actual disruption.
It’s also worth checking in with your offsite storage provider about emergency retrieval procedures. Ask how requests are handled during regional weather events, what turnaround times look like, and who your team should contact if normal service channels become unavailable.
Organizations that utilize hybrid work environments can sometimes see extra complications because records often live across multiple systems and locations. Continuity testing usually exposes those inconsistencies quickly. The more standardized your retrieval and governance processes are, the easier it becomes for employees to find information when normal operations change unexpectedly.
Legacy data tends to stay out of sight, out of mind—until someone urgently needs it. Hurricane season is a good reminder to take inventory of older systems and make sure your team can still access the records stored there. You’ll want to have a complete picture of what records you have, where they’re stored, and in what medium.
You may already know where some of the problem areas exist. Older databases, retired applications, backup tapes, and inactive repositories often remain connected to systems long after day-to-day employees stop using them. The challenge comes when a disruption forces someone to retrieve those records quickly and the process depends on outdated software, aging hardware, or a small number of people who understand the system.
Start by identifying which legacy systems still contain necessary business records and test if your team can retrieve information from them without extra troubleshooting. You should also consider if the information still needs to be retained. In some cases, cataloged disposition can reduce both storage volume and recovery complexity. In others, migrating records into a more accessible environment may make more sense.
Clear documentation also makes a difference during an emergency. Employees should have a reference for where historical records live, what systems support them, and who to contact if accessibility problems arise.
Before hurricane season ramps up, review how your organization handles routine destruction. Severe weather events can quickly change what information needs to stay preserved; insurance claims, audits, investigations, and legal reviews often follow major disruptions, which means records scheduled for destruction may suddenly become relevant.
This is a good time to confirm that legal holds and suspension procedures work the way they should. Review who can pause destruction, how hold notices are communicated, and whether those decisions are documented clearly. If the process depends on informal communication or manual workarounds, problems can surface quickly during an emergency.
If your organization works with a shredding or destruction provider, check emergency contacts, service continuity plans, chain-of-custody procedures, and documentation. A short review now can prevent confusion later when teams need to make quick decisions under pressure.
For an idea of how your organization will be able to respond to disruption, run a simple retrieval test. Many systems work well during normal operations but become harder to navigate during office closures, outages, or remote work situations.
You don’t need a large-scale drill to uncover problems. Start with a few practical checks, like:
These exercises often uncover small issues that create bigger delays during an actual disruption, such as outdated access permissions, inconsistent naming conventions, or unclear responsibilities. A good time to address those gaps is before employees may need information urgently.
Hurricane preparedness often focuses on facilities, infrastructure, and hardware systems, but information access plays just as important a role in disaster recovery. When employees can quickly locate the records they need, organizations can respond faster, maintain operations more efficiently, and reduce unnecessary disruption.
Even a few small reviews before storm season can make a meaningful difference later. Each step to prepare for natural disasters, like hurricanes, is a step that will benefit your records management program overall. Take this seasonal opportunity to tighten up your operations.
Visit the Access Business Continuity and Preparedness (BCP) Center for guidance, tools, and resources to help protect your business operations from disasters and disruptions.
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