VanRein Compliance Podcast

Winter Storm Tabletop: When Weather Becomes a Business Risk

• Rob & Dawn Van Buskirk

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We turn a deep freeze into a practical tabletop for households and businesses, building a clear plan for power, internet, people, and customers. From generators and Starlink to MFA bypass and recovery checks, we map decisions that turn chaos into continuity.

• prioritizing power layers with generators and UPS
• dual‑path internet and cellular failover testing
• handling school closures and quiet zones at home
• stocking food, water, heat, and plumbing protection
• roles, thresholds, and decision points for DR
• customer communication across email, web, and phone
• physical security, vendor contacts, and property access
• MFA backup codes and access overrides
• integrity checks and lessons learned after recovery

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We can help you here at Van Ryan if you're a current customer or you're just listening and you're like, oh, I want to know more about them. We can help you create business continuity, disaster recovery, instant response plan. And we can also help you kind of formulate a framework for tabletop exercises. That is a line of service that we offer here at Van Ryan


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Rob:

Dawn, it is cold.

Dawn:

It's really cold.

Rob:

The entire nation is cold, but particularly here in Texas, it's very cold. It's cold for us. It was like 19 degrees. And there's someone here that does not like cold.

Dawn:

Anything below 85, not a fan of.

Rob:

That's everyone, that's Dawn's limit. 85, that's it.

Dawn:

Yep.

Rob:

Oh, well, I can't bring 85 back to you, but what we can do is use this as an opportunity to talk about a winter storm tabletop, not only for your household, but also for your business.

Speaker:

Welcome to the Van Rain Compliance Podcast with Rob and Dawn. We help growing teams reduce risk, build trust, and stay audit ready without the overwhelm.

Rob:

So first up, you know, we we know here in Texas we've had we've had a snow, well, ice storm. We don't really have snow, it's just ice. Uh and we know impacted a region. Uh our team is scattered across the country and the globe. Um, we'll just say there's some folks in some very nice islandy areas that are warm and and 85. Um, and here is not. But um we're gonna walk people through the process is what we did here at Van Rine to go ahead and prepare only on only the house uh and our business, but also for our team. So absolutely.

unknown:

Yeah.

Dawn:

Sounds like a plan.

Rob:

Does it sound like a plan? Where do you want to start?

Dawn:

Sounds like a plan. Oh, well, I think I think really, you know, personally, well, if you work from home, I mean, getting your house set and winterized, if you will, um, so you can continue work from home, I think that's that's a good place to start. I know a lot of our customers are in the same boat. Um, there are some that take, you know, trains in or drive in, you know, that type of thing as well. But um, let's start with that. Just kind of getting your your surroundings set so you can actually work, um, whether you're, you know, uh whatever you do, what whatever your industry is. Yeah, I think the first thing is ready to log in.

Rob:

Get ready to log in. You're funny. Because hey, I have something new before I get too far. Look what I got. I'm not bossy, I have leadership skills. You like that? Isn't that funny? Wow. Yeah, that's it. I wonder who got that to me. That's fun. Anyway, um, the cold also makes you delirious and get off script a little bit. But the first thing is power. Power, power, power. You have all this conversations about internet and all this, but to me it's power. How to make sure there's heat in the in the home or the office, right? Making sure um, can we be online? You know, does the network have power? Does the heaters have power? The furnaces have power, can we charge everything? So, first up is just prepare for rolling power outages. Um, that can be anywhere from you know having a generator, like we have a generator, I can just turn it on and we've got power. Um, or you're gonna go with uh battery backups, how far you can go with that. Or unfortunately, you just kind of wait, which is not really a good idea. So you need to plan for that. Especially for your remote folks. So if you got everybody from remote operators to remote workers, um, do they have UPSs? Do you provide that? Do they need it? Uh also can you just move the shift work as needed because um things change quickly. Um, the second piece there is internet. That's a big one, right, Dawn? Uh internet and cellular cellular.

Dawn:

I don't know why this is an issue in 2026.

Rob:

It it's gotten better. So a backup, yes, you have to have a backup. So if you have actually hard fiber to your business or your home, you need to either have uh cellular, like a T-Mobile, or obviously there's all the others, um, or do a Starlink. Uh, we've played with both and they both work really well for everything from video calls to basic work and all that. Uh, we haven't had those issues, but those are things that you need to do. You gotta have internet and cellular stability.

Dawn:

Mm-hmm.

Rob:

Now, what about when schools are closed? What are you gonna do there?

Dawn:

Well, that means you're gonna have a kid or kids in your house. So we need to make sure that they're set um and quiet, depending on what your day looks like, if you're on calls or that type of thing. Um, in our case, um school was out and um, you know, on video calls and making sure our son isn't, you know, working out, you know, behind me, um showing his muscles of a 17-year-old boy. Um, you know, just making sure it's it's just uh, you know, if the dogs, the dogs are always, you know, roaming around behind me, but uh just making sure you've got some um, you know, uh your your area is is secure, meaning it's it's kind of calm, it's quiet, so you can, you know, you can do your you can do your work. Um some of us uh are used to working at home, like Rob and I. Some of us, this is gonna be kind of a one-off. Um it's I can't get anywhere. The roads are closed, so I need to work at home. So just just kind of preparing for this. Um also, you know, big thing is is we all have phones, whether you're Apple, Android, whatever, um, or you just watch the news. We all know storms are coming. We all know things are coming. So prepare. Dawn't just go, oh, I have to go to the grocery store. It's the morning of no. Because you're gonna find empty, empty shelves, which I didn't because I planned a few days in advance. But as you know, people that people don't have, they don't do that. They don't plan. So I I highly, uh, highly recommend is kind of look at your phone. If you see some weather coming, you probably should get some things in order. Um, make sure everything is is working order, make sure your battery backups are charged or your generator, whatever it is, and they're ready to go and in good working order.

Rob:

Yep. Those are those are the key pieces. And then making sure, you know, just because your your cloud systems are available does not mean people can access them. So you really have to make sure that you have internet backup. Can you run with a skeleton crew? Maybe, maybe half of your team doesn't need to be on, right? Uh maybe half of them are having power issues. So that's also where you have a little bit of grace and go, okay, get get your house set, get things dialed in. We can roll work wherever you need. Those are the key things. But you mentioned a good part is uh important part, not a good part, is the weather advisory um escalations and notices. Um I think, you know, in our last little winter storm, which is still rolling through the U.S. by the time we're recording this, um, there's still a lot of alerts out there. We're my I see my little alert on my weather guy thingy uh on my computer right now. So it constantly alerts you. So you gotta make sure that you're ready and prepared. You kind of know what's going on uh the best you can. So, you know, that's where like uh we talked about tabletop exercises where Dawn and I kind of walk through, okay. Well, what happens to the power go out? Great, plug in the generator. Okay, that's good. Internet goes out. Well, we roll over to we have a T-Mobile um, you know, hotspot that we can run the business on, and that'll go from there. And if that fails, then you go to Starlink. And then at least the business continues to go. And if all those fail, then I guess we just have margaritas.

unknown:

No.

Dawn:

Well, and you're missing a big important part too. Yeah. It's not all about us being connected, right? I mean, obviously we want to make sure that business continuity, that we're not, you know, uh losing business. Um, we can't take phone calls, we can't, you know. But at the end of the day, if everyone has an outage, there's an outage. But let's also make sure you're taking care of your, you, yourself personally and your family. Do you have food? Do you have those buckets of food that you can buy at a Costco or Sam's? What if power goes out? We had this happen about four or five years ago. We had like boiling water notices. It was crazy, like backwoods, crazy stuff. Um, and so have those big jugs of water in your pantry. Have those boxes of food. They're not gonna be great, but is it gonna save your life? Yeah. So have those, have some things like that, some, some, some foods that you don't need a microwave, you don't need a stove. Maybe have one of those portable, portable grills with the propane or portable stoves with the propane available to use for camping. Like who, you know, we don't camp anymore, but we have one of those in our garage and we still keep it. So just also just make sure that you're you're safe and you're you're healthy and you and your family are are protected. Blankets, candles, things like that. So it's not just about is the internet on and can I use my phone? Um, it's also about making sure you you you can actually live through it. Um, you know, and and hey, if you lose your phone access, not a bad thing to play game to their family. Do puzzles, read. Yeah.

Rob:

We play Uno.

Dawn:

So yeah. We played some moves puzzles.

Rob:

We went sledding. The boy and I. Well, ice sledding, but it's sledding.

Dawn:

Tubing, well, yeah.

Rob:

Tubing. Here's tubing. We did that.

Dawn:

Yeah, using pool tubes to uh you know, pool snow, you know.

Rob:

It died, but I hurt my arm. It's okay though. Oh. Uh yeah, you're you're real sympathetic, aren't you?

Dawn:

Yes, yes. So anyway, I digress. That's that's a mom thing. That's my mom speech right there, is is get your water and your food ready, right? Sorry. But no, uh really it uh you know, getting into back back to rather the uh the tabletop. Um it it's really important to do this. Um hopefully your leaders, your business owners have thought this through and have a plan.

Rob:

Well, yeah, and have your and go through things. What what if, you know, as as storms go through the country, who's can be on, who's gonna be off? And who activates you know a DR plan? And when when someone is offline, what does that look like? That's the key. How do we how do we back up? How do we get things going? Yep. And then make sure you have decision thresholds. So um, like us for you know, power like food's a good point you mentioned. Yes, I was um says I'm dramatic. I don't think I am, but I was like, oh my gosh, we got to go to HB. All the food is gone. What's gonna happen? And you roll in, and what happened?

Dawn:

I get what I need, there's nothing gone, and I took care, I got it and left. And but that being said, folks in Dallas up north, they got hit pretty hard. So, you know, they get snow up there. We just get ice. So um different around the country.

Rob:

Yep, definitely. And as you go into, you know, so you get an HB, you got your food, ready, we're ready to roll, and then you move into like that kind of like the phase two, kind of that power loss, like workforce impact. Um, so with our team, we use Slack, we communicate. Hey, if you guys are without power or have problems coming Monday, or if you have teams at work over the weekend, just there's a there's a team channel, just notify, just let everybody know what's going on uh and how how it can help. Because if you got to move work, you gotta move work to who's who's available.

Dawn:

And that's another key point I want to make here is that we all are so connected. So Rob's saying, use Slack, use Teams, you know, connect, you know, text each other. Like, hang on, if you don't have, if your phone dies or something, you know, do you have a landline? Do you have a way to contact your employees? Do you have phone numbers? Um, on a you know, disaster recovery instant response plan, you should have a list of your employees' phone numbers, um, usually their mobiles or their home phone or whichever number is the number that is the one that they they prefer you to use um that that is that they can get a hold of you with. Um, it may not always be the cell phone, but let's just remind ourselves that it isn't it isn't always like, oh, I'll send you an email or text you, because if there's no connectivity, you know, um, you've got to think of other ways. So you've gotta you gotta really think about this. And I think a recommendation that I find a lot of people to do this is they kind of do a fire drill, if you will, to start. They kind of do one to test it. And then they have all this report. All these things, yeah, of all these things that, oh, we didn't think about this. Oh, we should change this. So you don't don't feel like you've got to be so prepared that your first test is gonna be 100%. It's not going to be. You're gonna find a lot of things that you don't have documented that that need to be documented that you need to think about. So I just just uh just kind of put that disclaimer in there.

Rob:

So and you also have to, and you're right. You have to also anticipate your what do your customers need? What's the customer demand, right? So like if you're you're an answering service, you're gonna get a lot of calls. A lot of people are closed, so you're gonna have higher volumes, you're gonna have you need you need to make sure people are available to work. Um if you if you have a if you're a medical clinic, you're probably closed. If you're an IT company, you're probably on call. Things happen. You know, servers die and stuff goes down. If you're a SaaS company, you can probably work anywhere you want to. But making sure that as your customers need you, how do you take care of them? What are the steps? And then communicate that. All right, we didn't have any infrastructure issues here, so we're good. But who's to say we got another month of cold coming? So it could we could have issues. And if we do, how are we gonna communicate that? Is it via email? Is it from uh and if so, you know, who on the team can do that and is authorized to do that? Um, or is it a banner on the website? You need to let your customers know what's kind of going on and uh how to take care of things because yeah, you have to communicate expectations clearly and early. Dawn't just let it sit. Let it sit because and then also work with your IT because you know, you know, if you have issues, when do you when do you turn the generator on? When do you have to go to a s to a secondary system or or um environment or servers or cloud providers or systems to keep things going? So have those decision points. Those are really, really good.

Dawn:

Yep. Yep. Yeah, yeah, and and brainstorm too. Brainstorm like what ifs. And and that may be a good way to to develop your plan or add to your plan, um, but also just to say, oh, I didn't think about this or think about that. I mean, you really gotta think about this here, like put yourself in the the moment, you know? Get an ice storm and all the lines go down. What's the first thing you're gonna do? Who's who are you gonna call? What are you gonna do? Are you gonna stay in your house?

Rob:

Are you gonna go in your apartment?

Dawn:

Are you you know, are you gonna go to Yep, call the ghost? Yeah, exactly. You're gonna go to the local community center church, you know, what what are you doing? How are you going to um, you know, this shelter or something like that? I mean, um so kind of kind of doing brainstorming and and the the key is here is we want to do this before something happens. How many times a day or a week do we hear of news stories? I mean, it is unreal. This happened, oh, we should have done more, we should have done better. Then they say, Oh, we had a disaster recovery, we're you know, we're uh this, we're that. We we've had the well, you didn't really think it through. So don't just put something together just because it looks good on paper and because it sounds good. Really work through it. And that's that's the goal for these tabletops is do them annually because you will find things that are going to be not applicable every year that are gonna change. And so let's be really focused and have really intentionality on this. It's not just a document fill in the blanks.

Rob:

Yeah.

Dawn:

That gets you started.

Rob:

That gets you going. But yeah, but yeah. And one thing to always think about too is your is your MFA bypass. So we have had this happen because our like how we set up our MFA is it's also geologically based. So if you're in a different region and try to log in, it's gonna force you another to get a new authentication mechanism, a new code, and go, hey, you were in Atlanta, now you're in Massachusetts, what are you gonna do? You know, is that really you? You were there two hours ago. So make sure you have your backup codes, which you can do. Make sure you have someone on the team that can disable or enable that as needed. Yep. Because especially if you have folks working offshore, um the platforms, MFA is designed to look at your, you know, your geographical location, if it keeps changing, it's gonna actually lock you out. So you gotta make sure somebody has the codes to get back in and deal with authentication issues. Nothing worse than be able to not be able to log into your systems and all of that. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Rob:

And then discussion points, those are good things. You know, what expectations are allowed, who approves them, um, how are decisions documented and what happens when policies meet reality. So the documentation piece is key. Um, kind of like to do, I think Dawn, you and I have done it a couple times, just run a running Google Doc or Word doc or whatever, and just write down decision points. You have your DR plan, you're gonna walk through it, but then also make notes. Make quick just notes, even if they're just you know, quick notes, doesn't have to be perfect. Get something out of your brain, get that out of your brain and go, we need to adjust this or adjust that. Those are big pieces.

Dawn:

Make a document. I mean, here's something silly. I mean, it, you know, and I'm totally playing the the mom, the mom role in this podcast here. But when we when we got our generator a couple years ago, because we knew we we needed one, um, and so we got one, we actually all went out, hooked it up, figured, figured it out, and wrote down the steps and created a Google Doc for our family. So then if something, if you know, one of us isn't home or it's just our son, he actually has a document on how to do it. And so again, it it's documented. Document, put it down. We have a policy and procedure of how of how to do it. Um, because don't you know when things happen it you have to be responsive pretty quickly. You don't have time to figure it out. You want it to be, you know, documented and okay, we've done it. And also we run through it every year. We practice. Again, that's why we're talking about this is tabletop exercises. We practice personally in our own home, practice certain things. What if this happens? What if this what do we do? Where do we go? You know. So it it's all real important. Like I said, I I'm um feel feeling like I'm I'm being the the mom here or the parent, but it this is really, really important to to uh to to practice or to practice to to um exercise your um your tabletop and every year. Um things change.

Rob:

Yeah, like like generator or even phone call. Well, generator, there's like six steps um that you have to go through, right? But if you miss one of the steps, it doesn't work. And also you're dealing with 220, you're dealing with high power um you know electricity when someone to die or have a problem with that, and set it up beforehand. Like this this storm, we just kind of got through, everything's set up, everything's ready, I gotta flip one breaker, and we're up and running. So um, your house, maybe you have a UPS, flip it up, run it, uh, and make sure that works. Or you have a power wall. Or if you have nothing, there's a plan that could be a plan as well. It's like, hey, I don't have any backup. I have to notify my leadership, let them know I'm down, I'm down. I don't have any backup.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Rob:

That's key. Now it is very cold, but you have to have to think about where to go when you need to get heat, right? You got your yourself, you got your pets, maybe you have loved them loved ones, maybe elderly, your folks you're living with you or whatnot, what that looks like. You gotta make sure that what's the plan there besides calling yes, that's there, but it's like they need to be working, they need to be uh helping people that are that have critical health issues instead of you didn't plan appropriately, and now I've got heating issues. So yeah.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Yeah.

Rob:

Boy, now frozen pipes done. We don't like frozen pipes. We haven't had any.

Dawn:

Hasn't happened to us, I think it's happened.

Rob:

So in this so we're in central Texas, so in the south, primarily all the water runs up in the attic, so that usually is what happens. It gets cold in the attic. Um, or you have an outside wall. Got one we've got one shower head on the outside wall, and what happens it does it does sometimes freeze, but it has to be cold like 10 degrees for like days. So what you do is drip the water, right? Or if you have zones, shut the valve off. Or if it's really bad, you could shut the water off to the building, to the office, whatever you need. And then that goes into Dawn, you talked about having bottled water. You know, you can you can we can get through a you know some time without a flushable toilet, a little bit, um, but you can't get dehydrated. So you have to make sure that you have some water and even those like MRE packs, those little venture packs, just to keep things going. Yeah. Um but also makes it.

Dawn:

As far as a facility, yes, good. Oh, yeah, just uh you may not be the the property manager. So if one of your a couple of your workers go into your office and they're gonna obviously call you, but then you're gonna, you know, okay, or they're gonna say, Who's the property manager? I need their number. So also having that documented is who you call, who your who your property management is, who your utilities are through, your gas lines are through, your everything. And so then if you aren't there, but you've got your your staff, then they know who to call because it's documented. So that's really important.

Rob:

And know where your mechanical rooms are, you know, like at your home, know where your water comes in. How do you turn the water off? Where's your panel? Where's your breaker? How do you turn a breaker off if you have a problem? In an office setting, how do you turn it off to your suite or your building? Or you're right, call the landlord and they will tell you how to do that, or they'll get, you know, the plumber electrician to turn that off because you can save a lot of time, damage, and money by shutting things off uh you know inappropriate quickly. And then understanding what really happened. You know, was it a pipe? Was it just a uh whatever things things break, things break. So and also those, you know, you talk talked about the the facilities and everything. Also make sure you document, okay, here's your landlord's information. Okay, but also don't forget your other vendors, your IT, um, maybe your alarm system, maybe a sensor went off and alarm's going off.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Rob:

Um, fire, local metro fire, like what is that who who do you call? Yes, 911 will help, but also there's you know, like here, 830 numbers you can call and and get help, making sure you know who who's coordinating all that. So now what about extended disruption? What about like, you know, um at the time of this recording? I know there was massive 365 outages last week. Um, and extended disruption is three, four, five, six hours that that happened. So, you know, how do you keep your business up and running? Um, even though email is not a critical system, it's become a critical system, right? But understanding, you know, how long is the power going to be out or how long is IT gonna have to work with with uh internet? And then um, what about client requests? You know, how do you work through those?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah.

Dawn:

Lots of different scenarios you can run through. Yeah, but it's not just about weather. This isn't just about weather. It's it's it's about and we're talking about it because we are going through a lot of weather right now. The whole country is going through weather, um, lots of freeze, lots of really random weather patterns. But this is this is you know, leads into, you know, obviously cyber, cyber attacks, you know, physical attack. I mean, your building is shut down. I mean, look at it this way. If if if there's a a severe storm or something, and what if, you know, windows are bashed in or something, you're gonna people could loot. You know, you could have you could have things stolen. You could have, oh, I'm gonna get into there. Oh, I got into your your server room and I was able to, you know, after the storm, you know, get into it, you know. I mean, you you've also got that that type of thing too, that that can happen.

Rob:

So lots of pieces to to to this these exercises that you can every and every one of the frameworks from HIPAA to ISO to SOC to Hitrust or NIST, there's all they also have physical controls. And physical means who has access to the building, to your home, to your laptop, to your phone, to your computers. Is it, you know, is it secured via uh, you know, is there cameras, is there locks, is there cipher locks, is there keypads, is there retina scanners, what uh whatever there is, how do you protect the environment? Those are the key pieces. Um, and then making sure that, you know, if you have vendors, um making sure that they're true partners instead of just a vendor, and what is the SLA impact to that? What does that look like?

Dawn:

Um how are you communicating this to to your clients, to everyone? Is this a banner on your website? Something you can throw up? Is this is this um on you know, um a mass text? Is this a um, you know, change your voicemail? This is what's happening. We're at an outage because of XYZ. How do you communicate that to your customers? Um, the worst thing you can do is not say anything at all because customers are calling. Uh, well, where are they, you know? Um, we do a really good job here in Texas. I think it's really funny because we are not a state where we're supposed to get snowstorms and ice storms. Um, but we do a really good job communicating way ahead of time. The schools, hey, we're keeping an eye on stuff. We overcommunicate because it the ice here is so bad. Um, when you know, other states that are just they get snow and that's what they do and have blizzards and stuff. I I don't think they have as good as a uh communication um in in um kind of in our experience with with other states. But it it's it's amazing. Sometimes you're like, really? But they they definitely tell you they they definitely over-communicate. So I I would say that's the best thing. And we we like to do that with our customers too, with uh, you know, um do it through an audit. We like to over-communicate, um, make sure they they know they've got different means to communicate with us. But so think about that. So that's all part of your plan too. Think about how you're communicating to your customers. What does that look like?

Rob:

Yeah. I mean, how early did the school say they were closed today?

Dawn:

Um that came in on um Friday.

Rob:

Oh, it's no Thursday.

Dawn:

No, I came in Thursday, I think.

Rob:

So almost like two days, two, three days ahead of schedule.

Dawn:

And we're talking email, social media, all the parent apps, all that, you know, blah, blah, blah, everything. Um, emails, yeah.

Rob:

Let people know. That's the key piece is let people know that Yeah, it was like three days before or something like that.

Dawn:

Yeah.

Rob:

Yeah. That should be closed, your office is closed, or who to contact, or here's a backup number, or here's a separate email address, or what to do.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Yeah.

Rob:

Well, now that we've gotten through the storm, like we have, and we did not lose power. I know I was kind of disappointed because I was ready. I got everything ready. I got one breaker to slip down. Dialed in, right?

Dawn:

There's still tonight, too. It'll still be freezing tonight.

Rob:

That's true.

Dawn:

That's true. Shut down.

Rob:

It'll probably rain in June and shut down. Um, so now what we've done. Okay, now the mess is over, the power's back, we got food, we got toilet paper, we're all set because you know, I'm speaking of toilet paper, where is the one warehouse that all the toilet paper from COVID is? Does anybody know? If you know, put it in the comments or something. I'm very intrigued. But anyway, as I digress, um we got everything back online, everything's a mess, right? What do we do? Now the power is restored, our systems return. Um, how are we, you know, how are we engaging with our our our clients and what are we doing with our employees? The key piece is just keep I I I would start employees first. You know, you have Slack, you have Teams, maybe have text, whatever. Check in on everybody, right? We're we're all human and we need to make sure are we are we okay? Is the family okay? Um, is your pets okay? Um is your extended family okay? Someone may be offline a couple of days, but you never know. Maybe they're they're you know, parents had a heart attack, unfortunately, or maybe they're helping their neighbor, or something happened. Things happen.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Rob:

Things happen. Yeah. So check in on your team, make sure they're set. And then also check on your clients. You know, let them know via an email, let them know via the website. Be prepared that, hey, we're back to normal operations. Things are things are going. But um, some of the decision points or the discussion points are key, is like integrity checks. So when there are issues, systems go up or down, or connectivity goes up and down. I've seen it where maybe ACLs change. Um, you know, there's a role-based access, right? There's access may have changed in groups, or maybe there's a password issue or something. You really have to have do some integrity checks in your systems and verify everything look right? Do the backups run well? You know, do the do our DR DR plans really, really work? Um and then your favorite is incident documentation, Dawn. Because you like to document that.

Dawn:

Yes, document.

Rob:

So what what's a good exercise?

Dawn:

What didn't come back? Yeah, what didn't come back and what did, yeah. And how do we rectify that so the next time this happens, how we make sure that doesn't happen? How does it make sure that we don't lose our system, our system setups, some something in our settings, something that just kind of went off? How how do we make sure that doesn't happen, doesn't get unchecked or something by coming back up online?

Rob:

Yep. Yep, those are key pieces. Okay. What did work, what didn't work, uh what failed, um, need more water, do we not any, you know, what do you what does that look like? Um, and really it's always about you know the learning. Like let's let's focus on the learning of the environment and not the blaming. There's always enough blame, right? There's you know, utility issues and weather issues, and maybe we forgot to put fuel in the generator, maybe the cord isn't long enough, maybe something, I don't know, maybe a breaker goes, things happen. But learn from that and just turn that you know that chaos into maturity and go, okay, we're in the battle, but we're gonna figure this out. Yeah, we're gonna get things going. So and those are those are the key pieces. So those are the things that you know, those are the things that that you need to take away from this podcast. And thank you for listening once again. And like and subscribe because the more you like and subscribe, the more folks get to listen to us. Um, but being ready, not only from a business standpoint, but a personal standpoint. Um, you know, your food, your water, your frameworks, hopefully you've got some good decision-making documentation and have be ready for any type of uh having consistency during the stress. So yep.

Dawn:

And we can help you here at Van Rien if you're a current customer or you're just listening and you're like, oh, I want to know more about them. Um we can um help you create business continuity, disaster recovery, instant response plan. And we can also help you um kind of formulate a framework for tabletop exercises. That is a line of service that we offer here at Van Rien. Um, happy to help you through that because I think uh, you know, it's not a matter of when, or it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.

Rob:

Yes.

Dawn:

Things happen all the time, whether it be a storm, whether it be a hacking, ransomware, whatever it is. It there's gonna be something that happens in your business, in your personal life, and you need to be prepared. And the better you're prepared, um, then the better off you'll be. So that's it.

Rob:

So now you're prepared. Now you have tools, right? Um you have the tools and you're ready to move forward. Well, Dawn, I think that was good. It's warmed up. It's 37 out. Sun's out. It's sunny. You're happy. School will be in tomorrow. Well, thank you all for listening to the Vanderine Compliance podcast with Rob and Dawn. And uh, we hope that there's some good nuggets so you could take it back to your business and your family. Until next week. Bye bye. Bye bye.