Your Business May Be in Hurricane Country. Your Website Doesn’t Have to Be.

Hurricane season is a familiar part of life for businesses and organizations across Florida. We prepare our buildings, protect equipment, monitor forecasts, and make plans for our employees and customers.

But what about your website?

When a hurricane threatens the Gulf Coast, the disruption can reach far beyond the storm’s immediate path. Power outages, flooding, internet interruptions, and damage to local infrastructure can all affect daily operations. At this moment, your website becomes one of the most important places for customers, residents, employees, and community members to find updates.

Your website should be able to keep working even when your local office, equipment, or internet connection cannot. Our hosting infrastructure is located away from the Gulf Coast, helping reduce the risk that a local hurricane or other physical disaster will take your website offline.

Your Website Hosted Away from the Gulf Coast

Many of the websites we host for clients across Florida are hosted on DigitalOcean infrastructure in Atlanta and New York. That geographic separation matters. When a hurricane impacts the Florida Panhandle, the Gulf Coast, or another part of the region, the physical location of your business and the physical location of your website’s server are two different things.

Your office may lose power. Your building may be temporarily inaccessible. Your local internet service may be disrupted. But your website is not sitting in your office. It is hosted in a data center outside the immediate affected area. This means that, in many cases, your website can remain accessible to customers, residents, employees, and other visitors even while your physical location is dealing with the aftermath of a storm. For businesses that rely on their website for customer inquiries, online forms, service information, or emergency updates, that separation can be especially valuable.

Why Hosting Location Matters

Think of your website as another piece of business infrastructure. Your building needs protection from the weather. Your computers need protection from power failures. Your business records need backups.

Your website needs a hosting environment that is reliable and appropriately separated from local risks. Hosting your website away from the Gulf Coast helps reduce exposure to certain physical threats, including:

• Hurricanes and tropical storms affecting the local area.
• Storm surge and flooding that can damage buildings and infrastructure.
• Local power outages that affect businesses and internet services.
• Damage to local communications infrastructure.
• Temporary closure or restricted access to your physical location.

The goal is to reduce the number of things that can take your website offline.

Website Reliability Doesn’t Have to Mean Giving Up Control

Physical infrastructure is only part of website reliability. Digital security and traffic management are important considerations, too.

Many KMA clients use services such as Cloudflare or Akamai as part of their website infrastructure. These platforms offer capabilities that can help support website performance, availability, and protection against certain online threats. Depending on the service and configuration, they may provide:

• DNS management and related services.
• Content delivery through distributed networks.
• Protection against certain distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
• Traffic filtering and web application security tools.
• Additional controls for managing how visitors reach a website.

The specific protections available depend on the platform, plan, and configuration. No security service eliminates every possible threat.

Cloudflare, Akamai, and Your Existing IT Team

At KMA, we understand that many of our clients already have IT departments, technology consultants, or outsourced security providers. Some manage their DNS through Cloudflare. Others use Akamai or another provider. In many cases, the client’s IT team maintains control of DNS and security settings while KMA manages the website and hosting environment.

We don’t require clients to surrender control of their DNS just so we can manage their website. Instead, we work with the systems and teams you already have in place. That might mean:

• Your IT department manages the Cloudflare account.
• An outsourced IT provider manages Akamai and DNS.
• KMA manages the website and hosting server.
• Our team receives the access needed to deploy, troubleshoot, and maintain the website.
• Everyone works within their respective responsibilities.

This arrangement can provide the right balance of security, accountability, and flexibility.

Why DNS and Hosting Coordination Matters

Your domain’s DNS settings help direct visitors to your website.

When someone types your domain into their browser, DNS helps determine where that request should go. If DNS is managed separately from your hosting provider, that may be perfectly appropriate. Many businesses successfully manage their own DNS through a variety of providers. However, the arrangement can affect how quickly and effectively different teams can respond to certain problems.

For example, if a website experiences malicious traffic or a DNS-related issue, the people managing the website, DNS, and security platform may need to coordinate. KMA works with clients and their IT providers to make that coordination as straightforward as possible. We can work with your existing Cloudflare or Akamai account, receive appropriate access, and coordinate with the people responsible for your organization’s technology.

You keep control of your infrastructure. We help make sure your website and hosting environment work within it.

Hosting Is Only One Part of Website Reliability

While hosting location is important, it is not the only factor that affects website availability. A reliable hosting setup also depends on things like:

• Properly maintained servers.
• Software and security updates.
• Backups and recovery procedures.
• Reliable domain and DNS management.
• Protection against online attacks.
• Monitoring and maintenance.

At KMA, we manage hosting infrastructure for clients that depend on their websites to work consistently. That includes maintaining the server environment, managing website deployments, and helping keep websites operating reliably. We also work with the IT and security teams responsible for the broader infrastructure surrounding your website.

Our goal is to take some of that technical responsibility off your plate while fitting into the systems and relationships you already have.

Hurricane Season Is a Good Time to Review Your Website

Hurricane season is a reminder that business continuity involves more than protecting your physical location. It’s also a good time to ask:

• Where is my website hosted?
• Is my website hosted away from the area where my business operates?
• Are backups being maintained?
• Who would respond if my website went offline?
• Is my website protected against common online threats?
• Who manages my DNS and security settings?
• Does my website team have the access needed to maintain the site?
• Can my website continue serving customers if my office is closed?

These are useful questions whether you’re a small business, a nonprofit, a government agency, or a larger organization. Your website is an important part of your business infrastructure. It deserves the same kind of planning and attention as your physical operations.

Let KMA Help You Review Your Hosting Setup

At Kerigan Marketing Associates, we build and maintain websites for businesses and organizations throughout Florida and beyond. Our hosting infrastructure is located away from the Gulf Coast, helping reduce exposure to local physical disasters. Many of our clients also use Cloudflare, Akamai, or other platforms for website security and traffic management. Whether your DNS is managed by your internal IT team, an outsourced provider, or KMA, we can work within your existing setup.

We don’t believe in forcing every client into the same infrastructure. We believe in building reliable websites and working with the technology teams responsible for keeping them secure. If you’re not sure where your website is hosted, how your DNS is configured, or what protections are currently in place, we’re happy to help you review your setup.

Because when the next storm comes, your website should be one less thing you have to worry about.