Dermalogica have their UK head office in Leatherhead, very close to the River Mole, one of the rivers severely affected by flooding before Christmas 2013. At 11am on Christmas Eve, we took a call to say that their offices were surrounded by two feet of floodwater, the building flood warning systems had been triggered, physical access to the building was impossible, and to add to it all, the electricity supply was intermittent.

Dermalogica are covered by Cerberus Recover, Shift F7’s Disaster Recovery service, and our Network Operations Centre (NOC) staff were put on high alert in anticipation of a DR situation. Additional checks were made to ensure backups were up to date and copied off site successfully, and as a precaution further backups were taken.

The floods subsided with no impact on the computer systems, although we remained on high alert until well into February when the danger of flooding had passed.