Disaster Recovery beyond Cyber – Live from Ashville, NC

All right. Welcome everybody, and, uh, happy Monday to you all. Um, good to see you all. Um, going to, um, just give it a, a, a moment here as I set the stage, um, a different cyber call. Um, many of you may be here for the first time, and if you are welcome, um, the, um, response over the post this weekend in support of, uh, Kemper Brown and electronic office, um, for their MSP and their team in Asheville, North Carolina.

And doesn't take much to look at the news and know what's what's occurred there. So, um, I just want to say that historically the cyber call, Gary Pika with me here, we've been in our fifth season now and you're seeing a lot more faces, um, on today. Um, unusual times, unusual circumstances. So we're gonna do an unusual cyber call. Typically. Um, you know, our, our, our sessions are cyber related, Gary, right? Either from the business, the governance or, or sales side, or, or a topic at hand.

Um, it could be in the news. And obviously this is one in the news of, um, you know, d disaster recovery at a whole, um, different scale and different level. So, um, what I did wanna just simply say also is we're gonna, our format will be each of the folks up here after Gary asking Kemper a few of the questions. These are the people that really stepped up this weekend and donated.

Um, just so you guys know, and I'll put some URLs in about the LinkedIn post, which has closing in about 15,000 impressions. Um, the GoFundMe in support of, um, Kemper and Electronic Office and the families is closing in on $40,000 already. Um, we hope to keep that going. Um, so we're gonna really appreciate, uh, everything everybody's done. And I'll also, uh, after I say one or two more things, uh, get an email out.

'cause I typically send an email, um, out saying, Hey, it's starting in five minutes, but I didn't get a chance to do that. Alright, so, um, lemme set the stage. So, um, we're in hurricane, uh, uh, country here in Tampa, Florida. Um, and we have another one coming at us right now, hurricane five, Milton, uh, that's due in a few days, but, um, when I heard about Asheville, I knew, uh, Kemper, in fact, uh, knew his dad, um, uh, back about 20 years ago and remembered a VTN event.

I was at VTN, used to be a program for Ingram. And, um, let me just let Tracy in. Bear with me, folks. Welcome Tracy. And, um, back in the day, um, in 20, it, it was 2005 or early 2006, um, there was a session on the MSPs that had just gone through Hurricane Katrina and very, you know, reminiscent of, um, what kind of, I shouldn't say reminiscent, but the, the, the level of destruction, right? That, that Asher just saw.

Um, and, and listening to these MSPs, um, talk about the heroism and, and things they did, how they kept their businesses and their people motivated. And I, and I started to think, wow, I want, I wonder what's going on with Kemper. And as I thought, thought about what's going on with Kemper and everybody, an email comes through from electronic office, his company basically saying, 'cause I'm on their mailing list.

Hey, just basically, um, we, our hearts go out to everybody and we're here to help. Um, so I reached out right away to Kemper and I said, what can we do? And I said, uh, I'm gonna, you know, just go to work and see what we can do to help you Kemper. Um, and the channel has been amazing. Um, so like I said, I'll put those URLs in there below. And with that, um, there's too many to list off.

But, um, in terms of sponsors that just, and MSPs that gave, without even thinking about it, but on the stage here, bitdefender or SonicWall Ninja Mash, uh, SonicWall, south Surface, et cetera, Huntress SaaS alerts, uh, et cetera. And, and so again, thank you all and I'm gonna put the links so you guys can see everything momentarily. So, Gary, with that, um, I will hand it over to you. Yeah. Kera, why don't you just start, tell us a little bit about your story, um, of what's happening there.

Like, you know, what you're seeing and whether you feel like, I know as an MSP you do some preparation for things like this, but what was your preparation relative to the scale? Uh, sure Gary, and thank you. Thanks everyone for being here. And thank you to Andrew. Um, I'm just wanna wanna say that I've just been overwhelmed by the generosity and the support. It's, it's really hard to, hard to put into words, into Kemper. Lemme just put in one thing. I forgot. Can you introduce yourself?

I normally, I skipped one big thing here. Gary, can you introduce yourself and tell us a little about your MSPs? Just Yeah, yeah, yeah. So first of all, I've got, I've, I've got hurricane brain over here. My, my brain has been, been mush, uh, for about the last week. So, uh, my name, my name is Kemper Brown. Uh, I'm the CEO of electronic office. Um, and elect electronic office is the, uh, MSP that my father, who's also named Kemper, founded, uh, back in the early eighties in 1981.

Uh, and so now we're, uh, um, uh, you know, gen Gen two, um, CEO and, uh, we've got, uh, um, we've got a little bit north of 80 clients, uh, primarily in, uh, uh, in the southeast, but, uh, certainly with a, with a heavy concentration in, in Western North Carolina. And so, um, uh, Gary, uh, to, to answer your, your question, uh, we, we, we didn't, we prepared, but we didn't prepare enough. So I'll just, I'll just kind of set the stage.

Um, we, we really got hit with, with a double whammy in that, uh, some of you guys who know California, you'll hear about these atmospheric rivers that bring in moisture. And for, uh, for the two days, uh, before we, we got hit by, uh, hurricane Helene. Uh, there was an atmospheric river that got stuck over the Appalachian Mountains and, uh, dumped, uh, what amounted to be a one in a thousand year rain event.

Uh, we actually received at the Ashbury Airport, I, I believe it was somewhere around seven and a half inches, just in the 24 hours ahead of the hurricane arriving, which, which puts it in a one in a thousand year, uh, uh, rain event. And then we had this very, very fast moving hurricane, uh, that came up from the, from the Gulf and just slammed us. And because it moved so fast, it, it didn't have time to weaken.

And so we got hit, uh, with obviously the additional rain, which we would expect, but also 60 to 80 mile an hour winds, and we just, we, uh, we, we had no shot. And, um, so at that point, um, obviously you had the, the flood damage, but the wind damage, uh, I think is what really caught, uh, a lot of people who, you know, are in my community. Uh, what, what caught us by surprise.

Um, and it was interesting because, you know, in terms of warning, we, we, we, we knew this was coming, but it was sort of a rain wind event. We've, we have been hit by these before, but I guess about Thursday, Thursday, middle of the day, Thursday afternoon. So, you know, approximately 12 hours before the storm is when people started saying, uhoh, this is, you know, we, we've really got a problem. And there was, there was just no, there was just no time to prepare.

Um, fortunately our business, I mean, we are, we are in the business continuity business. We're in the disaster recovery business. We, we had our disaster recovery plans, uh, and they worked. Uh, I think they, they worked as well as they could. Uh, for us, the, the big shock in all of this was the being cut off from communications never in our, uh, in all of our simulations. Uh, we never imagined that we would be totally cut off from cell service. We would not be able to make cell phone calls.

We would not be able to send text messages. And that was, that was really what was the, you know, what was the wham for us from a business continuity perspective. Um, and we can, we can talk, talk more about that.

But I think that's, that's one of the, we, we haven't gotten a chance to do postmortems, but when we do, that'll, that will be at the top of the list is okay, we now, we now realize that, you know, losing the ability to communicate, uh, via cell, uh, maybe, maybe taken away from us, um, you know, just a for instance, because of that, we, we weren't even able to reach every member of our team until Tuesday. Mm-hmm.

So that's, uh, you know, what, five, four or five days after the, after the storm. Um, just because, just because there was no, there was no cell, we were totally cut off from the outside world. Most, most people on who were on the outside knew more about what was going on than we did Gary. It's interesting, right? Because we always think these days about disaster from cyber.

And the first thing, and we talked about, you know, Clark Harshberger talks about this, is you can have an instant response plan, that's wonderful, but it's like the Mike Tyson getting punched in the face, at least have your call tree. But now all of a sudden, yeah, I can't call my call tree. Yeah. It's, um, I don't know, do satellites phones work when everything else is down? Uh, Who knows? We're gonna, we're gonna have Phones even work.

Uh, I'll tell you, one of the more reliable forms of communication was ham radios. People were communicating via ham radios. Yeah. Yeah. It makes you think about a whole different level. Like we, we only think about a disaster at certain level, and what you're describing is some of the things we take for granted. Right. Um, and the big one being communications, every aspect of it out. Right.

Gary, quick question, if I may, to Michael Crane, who, you know, obviously, you know, from, you know, the militaristic perspective, Michael, are there SATs that would work in this situation? Are there certain comms that you would, we could have in hindsight have said you should have had these things? Obviously easy to play Monday morning quarterback. Yeah, most of the time satellite phones will work in these type of situations.

Unless you're down in a valley behind a ridge and you don't have good line of sight, SAT phones will work. And there's a particular one that has lower orbit, they're called iridium phones. Um, they tend to work really well. Got it. So Kemper, how did you, under this, like what were you actually able in terms of running your MSP under those conditions? What does that look like, if at all? Um, Yeah. Do you understand what I'm asking? Like I do, I do.

Um, Describe, are you, is your MSP able to function employees, customers in any scenario? Yeah, so, so from, from our MSP perspective and, and what did work? So we're our operation center. We're, uh, I tell people we're a hardened building. Uh, our our building, actually our operation center before we, uh, moved in, used to be a, uh, meat packing facility. So we have these foot and a half concrete walls. It's, it's quite, it's quite the facility. And we have, uh, we're on backup generator.

Uh, we have a backup generator, and we have, uh, you know, we have redundant fi, we have redundant internet, we have a fiber line, and we have a, we have a 5G line. Interestingly enough, well, fortunately, so, uh, when the storm happened, we, we switched over to backup generator that worked. Uh, that, that was great. And, but we never, we actually didn't lose our fiber line until Tuesday. So at the building, we, we had power and we had connectivity.

The problem was that we couldn't communicate with the people that weren't there. And so effectively, um, what that looked like was, you, you communicate, you communicate in the normal channels. We didn't have satellite phones, so we said, okay, we're just, we're just gonna communicate how, in, in the ways that we know how.

Also, fortunately, we had members of our team that aren't in West North Carolina, and so we were able to communicate with them, and they were able to also be on call to be able to assist, um, you know, just assist in the com in the communication. Um, yeah. But That was, you know, it makes me think of one thing, like, you know, as our industry has matured and since, uh, especially since covid, many MSPs have people right. In multiple locations, countries, right.

Um, where probably, I know when I ran my, both of my MSPs, pretty much everybody was in our region. Yeah, right. Well, and so, you know, we, uh, areas where I count 'em, where I count our blessings, if you're faced with a disaster, make sure you have a cis admin out of, out of harm's way. Just by fortune, one of our cis, one of our cis admins had, uh, had gone to Charlotte, which is about two and a half hours away, and was outside of the, you know, uh, you know, outside of the hardest hit area.

And so having him available just, just to, to assist and, um, being on call was, was so helpful. I mean, we had, because this, and this gets into the, the tricky, this gets into the cybersecurity piece of it. So, for example, the way, the way our systems work, obviously we want to, we want to prevent, uh, our members of our team from connecting to, um, unsafe wifi. Well, I, I had a member of my team who, and it's, it's hard to talk about it.

He had a tree fall through, uh, his house over his son's bedroom, had to be evacuated in the, in the middle of the night. He was only able to bring his work laptop. He's in a hotel trying to, trying to get money from fema. And his, his laptop is blocking him from accessing it because he is on the open hotel wifi. And thank the good lord that we, we were able to connect him with the cis admin that would, was able to free up that connectivity.

Otherwise, he, he wouldn't have been able to, he wouldn't have been able to get that help. And so it's, I, it's, it's, you know, it's a, it's a little thing, and there were other reasons why it helped, but that story is one that I, I won't forget because that's the personal nature of all this. Yeah. So take us up to the current situation. We know that there's a lot going on fema, many organizations, right? A lot of it is still even some rescue that's happening. Yeah.

Talk about what's happening from a business infrastructure. Is any commerce happening? Like, what's the current status? So I, I mean, business businesses, businesses are, are working to get back up to get, to get back up and working. I mean, these companies, you know, they, they understand like we do that, you know, they, they, you know, have li have lives to, to continue to support livelihoods, to support, um, you know, these, these businesses have to get up, have to get up and working.

So just to kind of, kind of set the stage, and I'll, I'll take a step back. Um, when the storm, when the storm occurred early Friday morning, 27th, September 27th. So we lost at that point, we lost power, um, cell internet for the most part, except we were one of the few and water. So our main trend, our main transmission line for Asheville was, it was a 20 buried 25 feet deep.

And because of the flooding and these, you know, these creeks that became massive rivers, it totally wiped out these main transmission lines. So we lost water. Fast forward a week, um, power is slowly returning. Uh, in fact, my power came personally came back on last night, which means, or I guess day afternoon, I'm sorry. So nine days, we had a nine day outage. Power is returning, um, cell is returning, but it's not as strong as it would as it used to be.

You'll still be driving and hit random dead zones, but the water is, and internet is, is slowly returning, although slower than power. The water is, the, the water is the major, is currently the major crisis. It's very, very hard to open, to reopen your business when you don't have water.

So what, what we had to do, again, things that were not a part of our, of our, you know, disaster recovery plan, is we had to get on the phone and order, order a couple porta potties because not only do I have my team, but because we've got, because we've had power and internet, we've actually had clients that have come into our space to, to do essential functions, make payroll, uh, communicate with their team to make everybody safe, uh, do, do invoicing so that they can keep the, the, the funds coming in for their business so that they can then continue to, to, to pay their team.

And so, um, the, the commerce is, it's, it's trying to, it's, it's getting back on its feet. It's slow going. But really what is the most gut wrenching for me is some of these areas, um, you know, areas like Biltmore Village and Black Mountain, which are filled with, you know, have these vibrant streets that have, you know, shops and restaurants and things like that, that have, that have totally just been, uh, wiped off the map.

Um, and so trying to get these, trying to get these businesses up and running is a, is is a task. But, you know, us in western North Carolina, we're, we're a resilient, we're as a resilient bunch. And, uh, so we're just gonna, we're just gonna try and get back on our feet. Um, I think the hardest, and I apologize, I'm just giving you kind of stream of, stream of conscious, but the, the other piece of this is that so many of these businesses we're in the mountains.

Um, you know, businesses don't typically buy flood insurance. And so, you know, you, you have these businesses that are, have been totally wiped away from these floods. And without the flood insurance, uh, it's just creates such a, creates such a burden on this burden on them. Yeah. Uh, I'm gonna hand it over to Michael. Well, Kemper, I'm wondering, so as hard as this has been, what role do you think your disaster recovery planning has played in getting your business back up and running?

And maybe what are the one or two things that you've realized that you might have been missing in your BA's plan before the hurricane hit? Yeah, so I'm, I'm really proud of our team for, for how our plan worked. I mean, just in terms of what terms of what we had control over and what, what we planned for. Uh, the fact that our office, uh, our office never lost power. And it never lost internet until the power company cut our fiber line trying to bring up power for the, for the rest of the grid.

Uh, but even then, we, we, we actually, we, we transitioned to, to starlink. And fortunately it was a shorter outage because they knew it had been, it had been cut. But, um, you know, in terms of the building, you know, our building continued to be continuing to be operational, being a safe place that people could come work, a place where our clients could come. We, you know, we set up, we set up a special network for our clients, so all they had to do was ring the front doorbell.

And it's like, come on in. We, we have a large conference room. And, uh, we just told people, you know, be kind, share. Here's the, here's the network access and, uh, you know, do what you need to do. And so from all those things, it, it, I'm just, I'm, I'm blown away by, by how well that worked, what didn't work or what, where we have weaknesses was the sell the sell piece.

Um, missing that, missing that communication, you know, requiring four days to, to make contact with our team to make sure that everybody, everybody was okay. Um, and, uh, so that's, you know, that's something that we'll, that we'll have to certainly, uh, certain re certainly revisit. And, um, but, but other, but other than that, I'm, I'm, I just, ICI couldn't be, I couldn't be prouder of our team in terms of how we, how we handled that piece. And it's a beautiful thing when the team steps up.

'cause it's, it's easy to be there when there's no challenges, but when it really gets rough, you see the, the real character of people. Um, yeah. I, I think, I think the other thing that I've, that I've learned in all this is, you know, when you're, when you're doing your planning, you're so, you're so focused on the business and you're thinking about, okay, what do, what do we need to do to get our business up? What do we need to do to get our clients' business up?

And what, what we really had to slow down and think about was, was our team, uh, I mean, I've got, you know, you know, people who had, you know, had significant, you know, damage to their homes. Uh, people whose family decided to leave town, and they stayed. And so figuring out, how do you, how do you balance the, your team's, you know, your team and your team sanity with, you know, getting other businesses back up.

We, we pretty much, um, I mean, it was, it, it was, it was wide open last week, and for the most part, we gave everybody we could the weekend off just to, just to attend to their own homes and, and their own families, because, uh, that's important too. Um, and that was, that's, I think that's been another, another piece of this that we've had to, we've had to just sort of pa you know, pause and, and remember, um, that they've, you know, they're, they're dealing with crises at home too.

Um, and we gotta, we gotta make sure that we're, we're giving them the time and the space to deal with that. Well, I had another question for you, but you already answered it. I was gonna ask you if you could describe some of the challenges that your clients faced during, you know, before and after the hurricane, and how did your team step up?

But you, you've already told us, you know, the things that you did and how you helped and gave them a place to go and, you know, you really helped your community out. So I'm gonna go ahead and, uh, pass it on over to Jim. Jim, before you go, can I just, yeah, say something real quick. So, you know, Michael, just kind of apropos, uh, um, I think a lot of people are familiar with Tim Kennedy. Mm-hmm.

You know, uh, green Beret like yourself, and, uh, there's a, a group called Save Our Allies that first was formed to go help overseas and, you know, extract peop, you know, uh, people out of Afghanistan when things were going haywire there, when we were getting outta the, but they do all these humanitarian efforts and they were temporary. Again, you, like you said, you didn't have a lot of communication, but they're in your area right now.

And so I followed Tim Kennedy on Instagram and, and like, I don't think people, you know, they see pictures and stuff, Kemper, but they asked him, you know, so what's it like? Right. And this is a guy that's seen, you know, like Michael, pretty much the worst of the worst. And his description, his word was, it's apocalyptic.

I mean, it's, uh, people, like, it's so either I'm, I'm bringing that up now because you, you mentioned like, Hey, I had to give some time off to my employees to go take care of their families and, and what might be left of their homes. But it's indescribable fair. Uh, I I you're, you're asking me right, Andrew? Of course, yes. Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. It's, I mean, it's, it's, so I, yeah, it's, I, I can't really, I can't really put it, put it into words. Um, it's just no.

And nobody was, nobody was spared. Um, it is apocalyptical apocalyptical. I'm screwing that pronunciation up. Um, and that's what my, one of my, one of my good friends is actually the mayor of a small town, uh, called Canton, North Carolina. Um, you guys may have, uh, may, may have heard of it or may have may have seen it a dot, you know, uh, as a dot on the map. But that was, that was exactly his, uh, his explanation for it.

It's, it's unlike anything that I really even have the words to describe, you know, just entire, you, you just, these, you know, small streams became these raging rivers that, that swept everywhere. Uh, you know, everything around it away. Um, and, uh, it just, it just totally marred the land. I mean, this is, this is something that we'll, we'll deal with. It will be a part of our conscious forever. We'll deal, we'll deal this with this forever.

Um, it is kind of like our Katrina, I was, uh, semi, y'all may know Jane Cage. Yes. She was a, she was a, a long time, uh, BTN Trust X member and, uh, still involved. She leads an affinity group for, for Trust X. And I, uh, she's been a great resource because of what she dealt with in Joplin. And it really hit home to me, because she was telling, she told me, she said, you know, you know, Joplin, it was horrible, but it was a, it was a five mile wide, basically swath that was carved out.

And it, and if you went outside the five miles, you, you, you know, it, things were fairly normal. And we don't, we don't have that luxury. We, you, you, everywhere you look is, uh, you know, trees lean on trees or, or huge debris piles, water, you know, water lines. It's, um, excuse me. It's just, it's, uh, it's just absolutely, uh, devastating. Thanks. Thanks for just Unpacking. Yeah.

I mean, I, Jim, I'll, I'll add, just so my, uh, my dad, uh, grew up in New Orleans, and so for, for our family, Katrina was a, was a, was a major, major event. And a lot of it does remind me when I guess, um, uh, December after Katrina, we went down there, uh, just to, to help out some family and, and do some of that kind of stuff. And it's, it's, uh, it, it's reminiscent of that, uh, very much, um, thank goodness we won't see the same, the same loss of life and, um, and that kind of thing.

But it's, there, there are definitely some similarities to it. Well, it's not just the memory that lasts, but, so I'm in New Jersey, it's been 12 years since Sandy, and on the Barrier Islands, things are still being rebuilt, like the actual physical, what's been left after over a decade. Um, it's, it's not like it gets put together in a couple years. Yeah. So Kember so sorry to deal with this. That's Right. Yeah.

I mean, to go through this type of tragic event almost all over again, uh, I feel for you and I applaud you and your team for rising to the occasion. Like you have. I've often said that MSPs are the economy's first responders. Small businesses are the lifeblood of the economy in this country. And MSPs support those small businesses, right? They can't do small businesses, can't do what they do without technology today. So by extension, MSPs are the first responders of the economy, right?

So if someone's watching this today, and they haven't decided to donate even a small amount, please do so because the effect is actually exponential. What you're doing right now for Kemper and his team is gonna be, it's, it's a ripple effect, right? Because now you're helping other businesses and by extension their families to keep the lifetime and keep going. So that's just something to think about. I asked this question. I have two questions for you, Kemper, during all of this, right?

Like, how do you balance managing your client's, it crisis with ensuring the safety and wellbeing of your own employees during the disaster? Like, how do you manage that? Can you hear, can you hear him? Kemper? Yeah. I wonder if Kemper lost audio. No, he's, he's frozen. Am I? Oh, okay. All right. Let's, no, you're back. You're back. Oh, Hold On. Kemper, see? Am I back? Okay.

Um, you know, it's, we're, we're, we're, we're taking all of these blips kind of, so I, I, I, I think I got, I, Jim, I think I got most of your question. Uh, so hopefully I'll be able to answer it. Uh, for us, we, it start, it had to start with our team. That was, that, that was really where we, where we started the communication. Um, because we had, we had to make sure, we had to make sure that, that our team was okay. Mm-hmm.

Um, and our team was in place, and we, we had people that could, uh, um, that could help help our clients. So for the, um, you know, when the storm was coming in, we sent a, we sent a message, you know, we, we stayed in communication with our clients and our team, but we, and we told 'em, we said, Hey, listen, we, you know, we've got our severe, you know, our severe weather operations plan. We're, we're implement, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're, you know, we're gonna stay going.

But behind the scenes, okay, you know, uh, you know, who do we, who do we have, where are set up to, uh, to help us? Uh, uh, we have a key team member remote for us.

So making sure that she was in position to being a dispatcher is at ob, but making sure that is in her day-to-day job, but making sure that she was positioned that we could switch all voice communication to her so that somebody would be there Monday morning, started to, to start being able to answer the phone for whatever phone, you know, phone.

We got our, we, we got our team straight, but then on the back end, we, we knew that when Monday morning, you know, we wanted to be there to, to, to answer the phone, to answer requests to our clients that, Hey, you know, we're there. And we, we know that their first, their, their first priority is gonna be making sure that their, their team is safe.

But hey, when, when you got your team is safe and you've stabilized those kind of things, we're here ready, ready to climb in to, uh, to help you get, you know, help you maintain your critical operations. And that's where, you know, that's where our, our conference room came in to say, Hey, listen, you know, if, I mean, we, we literally had clients that had payroll due on Monday. And it's like, okay, come, you know, come in. We've got power, we've got an action.

Let's, let's make sure that you can, uh, that you, that you can make payroll so that you can continue, uh, support team. And so that's, that's the way, that's the way we approached it. And fortunately, we had on a Friday, the whole weekend that, you know, most of all day Saturday and most of Sunday was con communicate with the team. A lot of that was futile to make contact with some and just ensure as many people were okay, we could.

Sunday night night, I switched to, okay, let's send it, let's send one communication out to Vince. Let 'em know we're here. Let 'em know our, and then, uh, and then we'll, we'll work both fronts at the ground running on Monday morning. Does that, does that kind of answer your question, Jim? Mm-hmm. Yeah, it does. Thank you. In terms of, I mean, you mentioned, Am I still, is my audience Right? Obvious Cutting out. Yep, you're good. You're good for the most part. You're good.

So, Kere mentioned critical operations, right? Part of any critical operation these days is access to data and data protection. So how did your MSP ensure that the critical data of your clients was being secured and backed up before the storm even hit? And did, did any of your clients have any data loss? So I'm, I I did not. I I did not get that. I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's my connect. I don't know if it's my connection or Jim's, I'm guessing it's probably yours.

But in terms of data, data protection, what are you doing for data backup and protection for your clients? And was there any data loss? Yeah. Uh, so, um, so no data loss that we know of now, fortunately, we're, we're blessed there. Um, Datto is a, uh, you know, we're, we're big Datto partners. Um, and so, uh, a lot of peace of mind there in terms of, um, having that assistance. Uh, we've, uh, we've, I don't, I don't have an exact count of the number of, uh, of Datto clients.

We've, we've transitioned to, uh, basically not, you know, their devices were, uh, were no longer functional or no longer accessible. And so switching them to, uh, run on the Datto cloud, uh, you know, fully on the Datto cloud. So we've had some clients that we've moved to that, and that's, uh, that's, that's worked, uh, worked pretty well. So from that standpoint, we consider ourselves, uh, very fortunate.

Uh, we also, um, we have a, we have a strong Azure presence, and so we have a lot of clients in Azure. And so obviously that's also aided in our ability to get, uh, to get our clients back up and running. Uh, you know, particularly, you know, if we have, you know, if we have three or four key people and a client that come and plug in here at our office, being able to, uh, pretty seamlessly connect them to their, to their systems in Azure has been, uh, um, has been a, God has been a godsend.

So, um, fortunately, no, fortunately no data loss that, that we know of at, at this point. I'm not counting my chickens. I just, that's, that's where we are today.

It was, it was interesting that I got, I got a call from, um, a, uh, really, it's a, a friend and he's, uh, he runs a, a much smaller outfit, and he was asking me if I had any drive recovery connections, and I just, I, it was that, that was a hard, that was a hard conversation because, um, you know, to think about organizations that haven't invested resources into having a strong, uh, data, you know, uh, business continuity plan and data backup plan is, uh, that's a tough, that's a tough conversation to have.

Yeah, I can imagine that that is really quite unfortunate, but also goes to how important it's to plan, right? So, um, yeah, before I hand it over to Tracy, I just wanna thank you publicly, Andrew, for organizing this effort, uh, and getting the community rallied behind it. I think it's fantastic. So, um, thank you for that, Kemper, keep up the great work. Tracy, over to you. Mm-hmm. Um, Tracy, I think you're on mute. One second. I mostly live my life on mute.

So Kemper really pleased that we got asked to join in today. Uh, Jim, you've handed it off around the word community over to me, and I really feel like this is a, a huge opportunity for the MSP community to step up. So I'm gonna echo what Jim said. If you haven't had a chance to engage in this effort, I would encourage you, whether you know Kemper or not to step up, because you never know who is going to be the hardest hit in an incident like this.

So, Kemper, we've talked a lot about inclement weather policies. We've talked a lot about disaster recovery policies and incident response planning throughout this, uh, first half hour. But I'm curious, were there any unexpected cybersecurity threats that happened throughout the course of the hurricane that popped up out of nowhere? And if that happened, how did you deal with those? Yeah, uh, that's a, that's a great question.

So, uh, and I'll, I'll try and go into some more detail on something I mentioned before. There, there were no, there were no threats that popped up. I mean, there are disasters, like this are prime time for scammers, and, and we're, we're totally, you know, we're totally seeing that. But that's more, I think those are really more targeting that we've seen are targeting individuals, which is just really sad.

And there's a special place for, for people who feel like that's a, that's a, that's something that they want to do, be a part of. But, uh, for us, actually, you know, we, we actually had to be, had to position ourselves to relax some of our security. Yeah. Uh, uh, protocols, protocols is not the right word. Uh, uh, safeguards, that's a better, better word, but lack some of our security safeguards to allow people to, uh, to allow people to work.

Um, we had situations where, uh, where their cell phones were not functioning correctly, and in that case, or they lost their cell phone, we had one, uh, team member who lost his, his cell phone. And so we had to be able to relax the two FA standard so that he could actually log on, uh, and work until he was able to reestablish that connection.

And so that's why, that's why I said earlier that it was, it was so critical for us that we had a, that we had a member of our CIS admin team that was outside the affected area, so that he could jump on issues like that just to, just to support our own team to, to, to get us back up and running as quickly as possible. And, you know, nobody, nobody enjoys making the call to, to relax security safeguards or relax, relax security.

But when you're, when you're in a situation of, uh, of, you know, operational versus not, not operational, um, you have to, you have to make, um, uh, you have to make those, you know, those hard decisions.

And so that, I just, I just, that's one thing that I would say, you know, maybe, maybe we come back in two months and we kind of, once we have a time to do the postmortems and all that kind of stuff, and, and lessons learned, uh, and all this, particularly just, just from a, from an MSP perspective. But that's, that's one of the early ones that, you know, thank goodness we had, we had that kind of cis admin access.

Uh, it was, i, I shudder to think where we would be if, if we weren't able to, uh, to kind of make those accommodations to get our team back up and running quickly. Okay. And I expect that as you go forward, you've got a plan to sort of maintain diligence over the, uh, threat monitoring to make sure that nothing slipped in. I think you're right. We are seeing a lot of that being directed to individuals versus, uh, the MSPs or corporations.

But there is, I'm sure, a plan in place to continue to be super diligent looking for opportunity to make sure you are still secure. Yeah, of course. I mean, yes, uh, uh, a hundred percent. Uh, we don't, we don't exact, we don't exactly know what that, what that looks like yet. Um, but yeah, we, we, we have to, we have to do that. We have to keep our our guard up because, uh, we're, we're at the front lines of those kind of vulnerabilities for our clients.

And we have to, we also have to not only, uh, as, I mean, it's what we do day in, day out is, is we have to make sure that we're protecting ourselves to protect our clients, but we're also at the front lines of, of protecting our clients. And so that's, that's the balance that we're constantly working with.

But in, but in a disaster situation like this, um, uh, certain concessions have to be made, and you have to, you know, you have to, you have to work, you have to work through that, and you have to under, you know, make, make calls on what is, uh, what, what you're able to do versus maybe what, what, you know, risks that you're not able to tolerate.

And those, and those kind of things, while also just maintaining diligence and, and high alert, um, because, uh, because there's a lot of, there's a lot of bad guys out there that try and that, that are trying to take advantage of this situation, unfortunately. Absolutely. Let's turn towards your, your team. Again, your people. At the core of every disaster, it is the humans that are going through and needing the assistance.

So you've talked a lot about the ways that you were staying in touch with your team. You talked a lot about the way that you were opening up the space of the community, but leading through a situation like this, honestly, unless you are super highly caffeinated, I'm not even positive how you're still awake today when you think about how you are keeping morale on the team together, how you are ensuring that your employees feel supported. This is a today question, but it's also a into the future.

The, I am feeling very grateful all of you to be Canadian today, where there are no natural disasters of any real sort. And this is just space I've ever had to give. Whoa, Whoa, whoa, whoa. What did you just say? No national Disasters, no major national disasters here. Full fires. We got 'em, we had 'em all the way down here. Not in Toronto, Ontario. Like, you gotta be honest with you, I am insulated. I'm in the third largest city in the world.

There's not a lot of scary things happening where I am. And it's, I ran a business once and I never really had to think about the people part of this. So as you go forward, where do you think the most important opportunity to make your staff feel supported, lie, and, you know, had, has that been built into your sort of instant response plan? Yeah, that's, that's a great question.

First, I'll, I'll say that, uh, Asheville, North Carolina, uh, gained, and one of the reasons why it's a very desirable place to live is because there weren't any natural disasters that was kind of part of our, part of our calling card. So, uh, so be careful, uh, with, with that. This was, this is not, this is not an area that is accustomed to, um, events, you know, events like this. Again, this is, this was a one in a thousand year event.

Um, uh, so it's just, it's, uh, I I hear that and I think, yeah, I remember, I remember saying the same things. Um, but what's, so, what's interesting is one long term is makes me a lot more nervous than short term. I, I don't have the answers for the long term yet. Short term, it was interesting on when I was, when I was working through things on Saturday and Sunday, I find I found my brain going back to how, uh, how we responded during the early days of the pandemic.

Like that first, like that first week to 10 days, uh, in, in like March of 2020, when there was, when there was so much fear and uncertainty. Um, and I, I actually, as I was, as I was kind of building my communication plan, I went, I went back to some of those communications that, that I sent. And that was, that was really, really helpful, uh, for me. And so I think using that, that has been a, that's been a great template.

I don't like the idea that, oh, we had to go through Covid to prepare ourselves for this. Um, but in, in some ways, uh, that's, that's the reality. Uh, long term, I don't know. Um, we, you know, we have to stay positive. Um, we have, you know, we have to, to keep people going. People wanna know that it's gonna be okay and it, and it is gonna be okay.

But there's, you know, there's a, there's a lot of work to be done, as Gary was saying, this is not, this is not something that is gonna be, you know, cleaned up in, you know, months or even, or even a couple of years, uh, that the la the effects of this are gonna last, um, a generation if not more. And so, uh, we just, um, we, we have to keep, we have to keep folks positive. We have to kind of count the blessings where we find them and, um, and keep it moving.

I, I do worry that, you know, when, when we're not, you know, as the news cycles shift and we, we fall out of the, uh, the public eye, you know, there's still gonna, there's still gonna be people here that are hurting. There's still gonna be just tremendous amount of, uh, work to be done. Just even just cleanup work. I mean, there are people that, there, there's still people that haven't been able to stabilize their own, you know, personal situations.

And that's, um, that's, that's, you know, that's really scary. How do you, you know, we we're, we're, we have team pe team members. They're, they're talking about that it may be 20, 25 before the water comes back to some people. Um, you know, I, you know, you, how do you, how do you keep somebody focused, um, and engaged in their, in their work life when it's hard?

You know, they, they have to search to find a, find a hot shower, or they can't, you know, they can't figure out how they're, how they can do simple like household task like laundry, you know, where, how do you, how do you do laundry when there's no water? Um, so that's, that's gonna be a, that's gonna be a great challenge for us.

And something that is, uh, we're not, I'm not quite there yet, but, uh, you know, the, towards the end of this week, things are, we're, we're gonna have to shift to that to, to figure that, figure that piece out. Um, I don't have an, I'm just gonna be honest, I don't have, I don't have that answer yet. Well, Kemper, make sure that when you get to that point, you reach out and ask the community part of that solution as well. Yeah.

I am more than happy to lean in on, uh, some opportunities that I might have to share some ideas around that. And with that, I'm gonna pass things over to Brian. Thanks, Tracy. Uh, thanks Kemper for jumping on and telling your story. Uh, Grateful to be here. Yeah. I'll have a couple of questions. Um, the first one, probably a little bit early to, to fully know this, but how has this experience reshaped your approach to business continuity?

Say from a protocol standpoint, from a technology standpoint? Uh, the biggest thing is, you know, in situations like this, um, good communication is, is literally life or death. And when you're in situations where you have, uh, you have unreliable communication or you situations where you wanna minimize necessary communication.

And so, um, I, I think we did a pretty good job, but I still think that we probably ha there, there are probably areas that we'll go back and revisit where we need to set things up in advance so that if we do lose, you know, lose those communi lines of communication, like we lost that, um, you know, that we have plans and protocols in place, so people still kind of, kind of know, know what to do.

Um, and another, another piece of it, it's, it's, it's related, but not directly to your question, is I think that I, I'd never been in a situation where I was, where I literally was in, felt like I was in, felt like I was in survival mode, not, not necessarily survival mode for my, not, like that my life was ever in danger.

But, you know, when the, when the, when we lost water, um, and we had been out of power for, you know, at that point, I don't remember if it was six or 12 hours, you know, all of a sudden you're, you, you're just thinking about things like, okay, you know, I, my wife and I, we have a, we have a toddler. And so like, we're like, okay, you know, what does, what do meals look like today? How are we gonna, how are we gonna make sure that we, you know, that we have water? You know, things like that.

And when you're so focused on those things, there are, there are other simple, obvious things that you need to be still be thinking about and doing, but you're not, it, you, you're, you, you don't, you don't realize it. Um, and I mean, it was, it was amazing. It was, it was a blessing.

My, my brother lives in Charlotte and on Sunday, so two days after the storm, uh, he arranged a mutual friend of ours and he basically sent up this, he sent up this a bunch of water and this big enormous Rubbermaid full of just stuff we needed. And I remember going through, and it's, it's still emotional for me to talk about just what he was sending things that I needed, but I didn't know, I didn't know I needed. Mm-hmm.

I wasn't, I was so focused on the, you know, the bare essentials that there were things that, that he had sent me that were just made all the difference. And being in that scenario, I, I couldn't, I couldn't have called him and asked him for, asked, you know, I, I had a little, I had a little pocket radio with, uh, earbuds, but we didn't have one with a speaker, and he sent one with a speaker.

But I, I didn't, I didn't know enough to be able to actually say, Hey, listen, do you have, do you have a radio with a speaker? So we can, we can keep, you know, the whole, everybody can keep up with going, what's going on? So, and there are other examples. So those, that's the other thing that is, um, that will, that sticks with me, that, that will stick with me.

Um, uh, and I think that's something to learn when you're dealing with others that are in these, in these scenarios that sometimes, you know, everybody, everybody wants to help, but sometimes you just say, Hey, listen, I'm thinking clearly here are the things that you might need, you know, here, here you go. 'cause there's a good chance that they're gonna get them and they're gonna be like, oh my goodness, of course I need this. But I, I wasn't able to actually tell you that.

Um, I don't know, I don't know if that, if that resonates or that that's, that makes sense, uh, in my still hurricane brain. But that's something that I, I find myself thinking about multiple times a day. Yeah, it, it absolutely does. And, and that leads nicely into just asking about resiliency. Um, I'm sure you've learned some valuable lessons from this experience, both individually, but as a, as a team. Um, maybe tell us a bit about that.

Um, I learned, I have, I mean, I didn't, I didn't learn 'cause I knew it, but it, but it reinforced, uh, that I got that I've got a hell of a, that I got a hell of a team. Um, and, um, and you know, you, the old Mike Tyson adage that everybody has a plan till they get punched in the face. Like, your plans are important, your plans, your plans are a good starting point. But disasters, they don't, they don't, your, your, your plan always has to be adjusted.

You know, you just, they, they don't, they don't fall in disasters, don't fall into nice little plans. And so you have to be able to pivot and adjust kind of on, on the fly. And so, you know, you plan for everything, everything you can. And then, you know, where you, um, um, you know, where you have to adjust. You, you adjust the best you, you know, the best you can, and you just do the best. You just do the best you can with what you, with what you got at the time.

And so, yeah, I mean, it's, that's not to say I don't wanna minimize disaster recovery plans because without 'em, they're, they're just, they're just essential. But to think that, oh, it's just, it's gonna go exactly like this. That doesn't, that doesn't happen. Um, Kemper it's so funny you say that.

'cause again, I said about Clark Harshberger, who we've had, who's the director of incident response for all of CrowdStrike, and we've had him on the call and he talks about the importance of tabletops and incident response plans, Gary, right? We've had 'em here, but that's where he talks about the, you can't predict it's always gonna be different.

And he go, he went through like things like the call tree and thing, things that you're not gonna sit there and look at your incident response plan, per se. You're, it's, you're going to react to the situation. That's the part of, you know, rehearsal and practice and, you know, doing things. So, yeah.

And one of the, one of the things that we did, um, that we had never, that had never, ever come up in our, in all of our discussions is there was a point where my, my COO and I were, um, you know, we were, we were together and we were, we were, we were hashing it out. I mean, it was, we, we were really, um, we, we just had different, we just had different views of, of what we needed to do.

And it got to the point where I said, okay, listen, um, you, you focus your concerns on the team, make sure, make sure the team's getting what they need. If the team's getting some, if the team needs something, you know, you, you need to come and, and tell me that I'm gonna focus on the clients and getting the, and getting the clients what they, what they need. And we'll, we'll just, you know, we'll, we'll just balance it together the, the best we can, the best we could.

And that, that was, um, incredibly helpful to just 'cause you, you can't, you can't forget either one of them, but, but balancing those two, you, you really have to do both. And, um, uh, but again, that was, that's another lesson for me is, um, you know, everyone with disaster recovery, it's all about, it's all about the business, but the human aspect, you gotta remember the human aspect because, you know, they're, they're, they're dealing with the, you know, they're, they're suffering too.

They're not robots. So we're, we're, we're coming up for the last few minutes here. Yeah. So zb, if you could ask one last question, if you don't mind, bud. And, um, sorry we didn't get through all of 'em. I'm sorry. I'm, I'm long, I'm long-winded and I ask one more question, and I have one more thing that I just, I just want to kind of say You, you don't have to apologize. 'cause again, we don't understand and can't comprehend what you're dealing with.

No one out here can, and you have all the grace in the world. So Go ahead, cb, why don't you, yeah, No, I wanna say thank you, Kim, prefer joining. And, and Sharon, uh, I'm seeing the chat light up on the conversation, the topics you've hit on, and it's a lot of valuable experience. So first of all, thank you and thank you for letting us be a part of the community, Andrew, to contribute as well.

Um, and my question was more structured towards your leadership, uh, outlook, uh, but you kind of hit on it as far as like dividing the time between you and your COO. Like what impact has this done to your outlook on leadership and crisis management? I don't know yet. I honestly, I, I don't, I, um, I think I'd, I'd love to, uh, I'd love to come back maybe in two months and, and talk about that. It's, it's, we've been, because it's just, it's been hour by hour and day by day.

And, um, and so, you know, we're just, again, just kind of trying to, trying to keep things, keep things going. Um, I haven't, I haven't even thought about that, so I'm sorry. That's not a good, that's not a good answer. Yeah, that's okay. That's a fair ask. Very popular guy. At different events. 'cause uh, that's, that's a wealth of knowledge you have. So thank you for sharing that. You had to go through it, but, um, thank you for sharing. Yeah, yeah.

So, So, um, alright, so two o'clock, we'll wrap it up here. I know you wanna say something, Kemper, I just wanna say this, we, again, I can't thank everybody enough for supporting, uh, this effort, Kemper, we're, we're over $42,000. Um, and I know there's still more to come, Overwhelming. And, uh, I know you'll be a, an amazing steward, uh, of it and, um, for, for putting it in the right places, the right families, the right efforts. But the floor is yours as you close us out. Yeah, thank you.

It's the whole, the whole thing is, is just, it's, it's overwhelming. I don't, I don't have the right words to express my, my gratitude and the, the generosity is just, uh, it's, it's just incredible and shows how special the, the community is. And yeah, our, I I just kind of wanted to say our, what our plan is, is that we, uh, we have families and individuals on our team who we, we know that, you know, insurance and FEMA money is, is not gonna be enough.

And so that's, that's what we want to use this for is to, is to, is to, you know, first thing is to fill those gaps for, for those team members of ours to help them, uh, you know, get back on their feet. Um, and then to pass that there's, uh, there's some, there's some organizations here on the ground that are, that are doing, that are doing some amazing work.

And, uh, so we'll, we'll be, uh, definitely a hundred percent want to be, want to be good stewards of, of these precious dollars because, um, it's, uh, it's, it's, it's amazing. I, I never, I never thought that I would be a, a part of a GoFundMe and I, I just, I never imagined that something like this would come through it, it just, it just means so much. And, um, uh, yeah, I'm, I'm just over, I'm just overwhelmed by that.

And Andrew, one other, just like housekeeping note, I, I see the, I see the chat. I haven't really been able to focus on it or read it. I don't, I don't know if it's possible to get some sort of printout or something. I'd love to, um, uh, or, or maybe a recording of this. I'd, I'd love to just, just to see that and make sure that I, that I kind of absorb those, those thoughts. Yeah, I'll, I'll absolutely send you the recording.

Gary, any closing thoughts as you think about this with three decades of experience in this industry and probably seeing, you know, every facet of it. And Jim, I know you as well, but Gary, I'm gonna, as a co-host, just let let you close it out for us. Yeah, no, I, I guess my thought on it is, I, I don't know that we're always possible to be prepared Yeah.

Everything, but each time we take away some lessons and tempered, you know, described if people listen to this back, a lot of small things, right? Both personally and through the business, um, that he listed, you know, in the course of conversation of little things that we could do. And so, uh, I, I'm gonna go back and listen again and make a note of some of those. Awesome.

Well, and, and I would, I, I think it would be really fun just to put on, you know, put a placeholder at some point in two to three months to come back once, once we've actually had time to really fully absorb the whole event, uh, to say, okay, you know, you know, here's, you know, here's what we learned, here's how we can help the community, uh, to kind of, to kind of pay back the generosity to say, okay, you know, here's what we learned going through this.

Here's some things that maybe other partners can learn or other community members can learn to, to bolster their, uh, bolster their, uh, business continuity plans and things like that. That'd be, that'd be fast. The, the, the invites o open whenever you're ready. So Tracy, thank you Brian, Jonathan, Gary, Jim zb and Michael Cream who had a jump off and everybody that you know has donated. Again, thank you for your incredible generosity and help and wow, Greg Starr, awesome to see you.

It's been a long time and I know you know Kemper Senior from BTN, so you got Greg Starr out here, by the way, Kemper. So, uh, Oh man. Yeah. Greg's, Hey Greg. Greg's a, Greg's a great friend. Yep, He sure is. So everybody, um, see you next Monday. I hope we've made it strong through Hurricane Milton and, um, God bless everybody. We'll see you soon. Take care. Got.