Power outages. Ransomware. Building damage. VoIP failure during lease signing. These events don’t send calendar invites—they just show up. And when they hit your Salt Lake City property management firm, the fallout can be massive.
Most firms assume that having "backups" is enough. But restoring data is not the same as staying operational. If your tenant portal is down, your maintenance tickets can't be accessed, or your leasing agents lose mobile VoIP functionality—even a brief disruption can cascade into lost tenants, upset owners, and legal headaches.
Backups Aren’t Enough – You Need Business Continuity
Yes, you should have backups. But what you really need is a business continuity plan—a strategic playbook to keep your operations running even when disaster strikes.
Without it, a "saved file" on a local server does nothing when your systems crash during lease renewal season or your Yardi access is wiped out after a flood.
Backups vs. Business Continuity: Know the Difference
Too many Salt Lake City property firms rely on partial protection. Here’s the breakdown:
- Backups restore your data.
- Continuity keeps your team working, tenants supported, and owners updated.
A solid continuity plan answers:
- How fast can we restore our tenant CRM?
- Where can the team work if the office is inaccessible?
- Which systems do we restore first: VoIP, AppFolio, or the camera dashboard?
- Who leads the recovery process?
And it includes:
- Encrypted, off-site, and immutable backups
- RTO (Recovery Time Objective) and RPO (Recovery Point Objective) planning
- Remote work enablement
- Redundant infrastructure (failovers for key systems)
- Regular testing through simulated disaster drills
If your current IT provider can’t walk you through this playbook right now, you’re not ready—you’re just hoping nothing goes wrong.
Real Disasters, Real Property Firms
This isn't a hypothetical. Disruptions have cost property firms dearly:
- A server fire in Colorado knocked a firm offline for two weeks—during move-in.
- A ransomware attack in Arizona locked access to all tenant files and delayed lease approvals for a week.
- A lightning strike in Utah bricked all their on-site phones. No calls. No support. Four angry owners.
Natural disasters, power surges, and cyberattacks don’t care about your leasing cycle.
Questions Every Property Management Director Should Be Asking
If a disaster hits your firm tomorrow, can you:
- Maintain access to AppFolio, Buildium, or Yardi?
- Keep your maintenance team connected via mobile?
- Notify tenants through your VoIP system?
- Restore owner reports and financial data in hours, not days?
- Prove compliance if regulators come knocking?
If the answer to any of these is "I think so" or "not sure," you're at risk.
Downtime Isn’t Inevitable—It’s Preventable
You can’t stop every outage or breach. But with the right IT provider, you can turn chaos into continuity.
At Qual IT, we specialize in managed IT services and business continuity for Salt Lake City property management firms. From AppFolio backup workflows to remote work readiness, we design plans that let you sleep at night—even when the lights go out.
Click here to book your FREE Network Assessment, and let’s make sure your team can keep working when disaster strikes.
