From the Desk of Josh Wilmoth
"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."
Mike Tyson said that about boxing, but after 24 years of leading CTTS, I can tell you it applies just as well to business technology.
September means football is back in Central Texas. Friday night lights in Georgetown, tailgates in Round Rock, and watch parties from Austin to Cedar Park. And here is what every good coach knows: the game is not won on Friday night. It is won in the practices nobody sees.
The past month handed us three reminders of why that matters.
On July 28, American Airlines suffered a technology issue that triggered a nationwide ground stop. Every plane that was not already in the air sat on the tarmac. Here is the part worth noticing: they were back up in about 45 minutes. That is not luck. That is an organization that knew exactly who does what when things break.
Closer to home, Nutex Health, a hospital operator that runs emergency facilities right here in Texas, told the SEC on August 24 that attackers had gotten into its servers and taken data. Weeks into the investigation, the company still could not say exactly what was stolen. Patient records? Employee files? Financials? They are still finding out.
And in one of the strangest incidents I have seen in a while, a ransomware group hit the AnMed health system, stole what they claim was six terabytes of data, and then posted their ransom demands on the hospital's own Facebook page. Think about that. While leadership scrambled to respond, the criminals were running the hospital's public communication channel.
Three organizations. Three very different outcomes. One difference: preparation.
These were not small operations with no IT budget. These were billion dollar companies with security teams. The punch in the mouth is coming for all of us eventually. The only question is whether your team knows the next play when it lands.
So here is my challenge to you this month. Ask yourself three questions. If your systems went down tomorrow morning, who is in charge of the response? If email and phones are part of what went down, how does your team communicate? And which system has to come back first for you to keep serving your customers?
If you answered all three without hesitating, congratulations. You are ahead of most businesses in Central Texas. If you hesitated on even one, you are exactly who I wrote this for, and the rest of this issue will show you how to close those gaps.
You have worked too hard building your business to let one bad morning undo it. Let us make sure your playbook is ready before the season gets interesting.
Schedule a free strategy session with CTTS today. It costs you nothing but an hour, and it might save you a season.
Josh Wilmoth President and CEO, CTTS
P.S. I asked our helpdesk team why the football team's server never goes down. They said it has the best backup quarterback in the league. I promise our actual backup strategies are better than our jokes.