The threat that the Kilauea volcano poses to Hawaii’s Big island is massive in scale, with lava continuing to spread and spew ash. When natural disasters like this happen, an emergency plan is put into action, typically urging residents to evacuate and take only what is necessary. But what happens when your business, holding data and important customer information, is in harm’s way?

Follow these three steps and you’ll never need to find out:

Step 1: Select a Data Center Partner

You should never house all your data in one place. As a business leader, it’s crucial to provide your customers with peace of mind that their data is safe. To do this, partner with a Tier III data center provider that is geo-diverse and understands mission critical infrastructure. Find one that has data centers from coast to coast and provides the security you need, even in the face of a natural disaster.

Step 2: Choose the Right Network

Purchase your data center and network services from the same provider. Make sure your data center provider owns their own network. The right provider will create a customized, highly secure, low latency and extremely fast network that fits your business needs. Make sure to create point-to-point connections between your customer’s racks in two or more geographically diverse data centers. This will help you create instant back-ups of your environment in two different data center locations which is the best way to protect your data and safeguard your customers from disrupted service.

Step 3: Choose the Right Cloud Approach

The final step provides ultra-data redundancy. While steps one and two provide physical backup protection, step three provides an extra level of backup by protecting your customers’ data in the cloud, too. This approach offers your organization greater flexibility and backup diversity by deploying a mix of on-premise, private and public cloud backup capabilities. Done correctly, you will have secure backup and disaster recovery between your customer’s dedicated or virtual private cloud, a physical data center and a public cloud provider like AWS, Azure, or Google.

As you begin this three-step process, identify a solutions provider that offers desktop to data center solutions. This is important because you’ll want to work with experts in helping companies make a smooth transition from legacy IT environments to a more efficient hybrid cloud infrastructure.

Natural disasters can happen anytime, anywhere, and before they do, it’s imperative to ensure that your data and sensitive information are kept safe. So, before it is too late, take the necessary steps to keep valuable data safe by investing in mission critical geo-diverse data center storage with a proven IaaS company.