Jan Rideout, CIO at Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Ship Systems unit, lost her Mississippi home to Katrina's fury. She said that if there's a bright side to the storm for her, it's that the disaster prompted the Ship Systems operation -- which has facilities in New Orleans -- to accelerate a plan to replace networking cables with wireless technology.

Disaster recovery plans have to be flexible and must take an organization's ability to respond into account, Rideout said. For instance, many plans assume that employees will be available after a disaster occurs, she said. But when the air conditioners in Northrop Grumman's data center stopped working after Katrina, there weren't any employees on hand who knew how to gracefully shut down the servers, she said.

That points to the challenges that Rideout and other Gulf Coast IT managers are facing as they scramble to shore up their systems, networks and data-protection mechanisms so their companies can withstand another major storm.

"There is not ever going to be the perfect disaster-recovery plan," Rideout said. "You can't write the perfect script, and the next time will be different. And I don't think we can forecast and predict every combination."