Business IT services in Laguna Beach.

Laguna Beach businesses face the same everyday IT needs as anyone else: working computers, reliable Wi-Fi, safe email. What is different here is how easily the town can be cut off. Because of its hilly topography and surrounding parklands, “few roads run into or out of town,” as the city’s Wikipedia entry puts it. This guide is written as a continuity plan, a set of steps that keeps a small business working through the disruptions this geography makes likely.

What the record shows

• Roads. The main routes are Coast Highway (State Route 1) and Laguna Canyon Road (State Route 133). In the lower canyon the road narrows to one lane in each direction.
• Fire. The October 1993 fire destroyed or damaged 441 homes and burned more than 14,000 acres. The city is bordered by more than 20,000 acres of wildland.
• Water. The flood channel in lower Laguna Canyon is undersized for major storms and overflowed in the late 1990s and again in 2010. The last three miles of the canyon are built up, with the Laguna College of Art and Design, the Sawdust Art Festival grounds, and other businesses.
• Crowds. Tourism is the main industry, with an estimated six million visitors a year.

None of this is a prediction. It is the reason for the steps below.

Step 1: Make the building optional

If email, files, and the phone system live in the cloud and staff use laptops, a closed road is an inconvenience instead of a lost day. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace both do this for email and files, and an internet-based phone system can ring a mobile app. The cloud, email, and AI page describes how Coastal Growth Co. sets this up.

Step 2: Keep a copy of the data somewhere else

Anything stored only on a computer or drive inside the building shares the building’s risks, whether that is fire, water, or theft. A gallery’s inventory records, client lists, and artwork images are hard to recreate. The business data backup guide explains the rule of keeping at least one copy off site and testing that it restores.

Step 3: Plan for power loss

California utilities can shut off power when fire weather is severe, a practice known as a Public Safety Power Shutoff.

1. Check the electric bill to see which utility serves the address, then enroll in that utility’s outage and shutoff alerts.
2. Look up the address on the state’s fire-threat map. The CPUC defines Tier 2 as higher risk and Tier 3 as extreme risk from utility-related wildfire.
3. Put the modem, router, and register on a battery backup (a UPS). It covers short outages and gives time to shut down cleanly in long ones.

Step 4: Add a second internet connection, and test it

A backup line on a different technology keeps card payments working when the main line fails. Two cautions apply here. Hills and canyon walls block cellular signal, so test indoors at the exact spot before buying. And a backup that needs wall power is no help in an outage: AT&T, for example, states that the wireless backup in its fiber plans does not work during a loss of power. Which wired providers reach an address varies, and the FCC National Broadband Map lists them.

Step 5: Get ready for summer before summer

The Pageant of the Masters is held during the summer months, and the Sawdust Art Festival runs from late June through August on Laguna Canyon Road. In spring:

• Separate guest Wi-Fi from the register and office computers.
• Test a card payment over the backup connection.
• Replace equipment that has been unreliable, while there is still time to wait for a delivery.

The IT disaster recovery plan guide covers how to put a plan like this in writing.

On-site help

Coastal Growth Co. is based in Laguna Hills, and the usual route into town ends on Laguna Canyon Road, the same road everyone else depends on. For that reason the working pattern for Laguna Beach is remote support first, with on-site visits scheduled for wiring, Wi-Fi, and equipment. To talk through a continuity plan, use the contact page.