"IT issues should not feature in your day. Technology should just work. If we do our job right we will be almost invisible... we strive for invisibility", this quote from our CEO and Founder Jeff Dodd comes from years of experience working with a number of businesses all of which wanted the same thing, their IT to just work. IT downtime will incur large costs, reduce productivity, lowered reputation and the potential loss of important data.
What is IT Downtime and Why is it So Important?
IT Downtime is when a business's hardware, system or internet amongst other things going down, or 'not working. Downtime will effectively put your business on pause, this can have catastrophic effects, that in extreme cases have been enough to completely destroy businesses. As an example, slow web pages and online tools that won't load can reduce the effectiveness of your service in the long term. if problems such as poor internet are putting off customers or slowing down your workers, it is you who will take a cost and reputational hit.
What Can Cause IT Downtime?
Human-Risk
As highlighted in our 'Why Human Error is The Biggest Threat Businesses Face' blog, our employees are unfortunately the most prevalent threat many businesses face. The reason human risk is so prevalent is due to social engineering. Social engineering is the tactic used by cyber-security all over the world and is the number one cause of cyber-security breaches. Social engineering is the tactic of manipulating or tricking an employee or business owner into handing over important credentials or identification without having to use a single line of malware.
Hardware and Software Failure
Outdated hardware and software also result in inefficient performance which can have a significant impact on productivity. If patches are applied without proper testing it can corrupt the entire application. If patches are applied without proper testing, this can lead to applications becoming corrupt which in turn will cause productivity downtime amongst other operational-related problems
Real-life / Natural Disasters
A natural cause of downtime could be anything from flooding, hurricane earthquake or any other real-life problem that causes downtime that is almost always out of your control. Whilst the risk may be relatively out of your control there are ways you can go about mitigating this risk.
Poor Networking
Technology now plays a crucial part in every business and having the internet to keep up with your business needs is imperative. If you have weak or subpar bandwidth your business will undoubtedly encounter downtime. Unlike most of the negatives, we've discussed internet downtime is especially bad as everything is powered through your internet and if that goes down or can't keep up it will stop all services across your estate. Find out how you can get internet that will always keep up with your business here <---
Malware, Viruses and Breaches
Any sort of breach, especially one bad enough to bring down your systems is every business owner's worst nightmare. If you get to this point something has gone horribly wrong and has often been enough to completely bring down a business if the breach cant is quickly resolved. Assuring your software is up-to-date.
What Are the Costs of Downtime?
On average businesses lost between £75000 to £96000 for every hour of IT system downtime
Monetary Loss
The first thing that comes to mind when we think about the negative effects of IT downtime is, how much is this going to cost? Unfortunately, because businesses now rely on more technology than ever downtime can incur devastating costs if it's not quickly addressed. Staff are still getting paid but unable to work, customers are left without service and opportunities could be missed. All of this can quickly add up, with the average amount lost being £1425 a minute for UK Businesses.
Productivity
Direct costs like repairs are one thing, but when you start to add up productivity costs you see that downtime is a very serious matter indeed. Businesses like yours have moved many services online and workers now rely on those systems to carry out everything from customer account management to taking payments and arranging deliveries. As soon as there is a problem with the internet, work grinds to a halt. This can go on indefinitely – until you resolve the issue. In the meantime, sales also slow or stop entirely so you are not only losing money but becoming unable to make more.
Data Loss
Any server outage carries the potential for data loss. Files could be damaged or corrupted, and network failure can open the door to a cyberattack that can compromise data. Even losing just a portion of your data due to system failure can cripple your business.
Reputational Damage
Any server outage carries the potential for data loss. Files could be damaged or corrupted, and network failure can open the door to a cyberattack that can compromise data. Even losing just a portion of your data due to system failure can cripple your business.
How Can You Reduce The Chance of Downtime?
Address Human-Risk
As highlighted in our recent 'Human Error is The Number One Cause of Data Breaches' If you want an easy and effective solution for mitigating human risk we have a one-stop solution that evaluates, educates, and calculates its way to a security-savvy workforce. Improving cybersecurity hygiene in your business. Usecure offers useful features such as planted phishing emails that test employees without the risk of a data breach and security awareness training.
As we've seen in our 'Worst Passwords of 2021' blog post passwords are the best defense, against brute force attacks from cyber-criminals. Unfortunately, poor passwords are still all too common; but there is a Solution. Introducing Bitwarden, the open-source password manager that enables companies to protect multiple accounts with robust passwords using end-to-end encryption without the hassle of needing to remember them.
IT Auditing and Risk Assessments
We've recently put out two blogs reinforcing the importance of auditing and risk assessments, 'Why Conducting an IT Audit is Important', and 'IT Risk Assessments - This is Why You Need One. IT audits and risk assessments focus on Identifying threats and potential problems your businesses could be likely to face. These are usually conducted before any big IT-related change. Risk assessments look at everything from your information systems, network hardware, safeguards, and data and assess the potential consequences that could come up if measures aren't put in place to stop it.
Adopt a Virtual IT Team
Turning to a virtual IT support team will take any stress you had surrounding your IT infrastructure and downtime off your mind. Through remote server monitoring and management, your IT infrastructure can be constantly checked around the clock. Potential problems can be identified before they have time to develop into serious issues.
Managed services include a full backup and disaster recovery plan as standard, providing a fast and reliable failover process in the event of a critical fault. Your managed IT provider will quickly switch to a different server and apply the full backup – so your staff and clients never notice a thing and there is no loss of service at all.
Avoid Downtime with Ease
At the core of avoiding downtime is your IT team, but for many businesses, their team may be a single person or be busy working on other parts of the company. This is why many businesses choose to move to an outsourced support contract.
Support contracts are a great way to give yourself peace of mind if something was to fail or break. A good support contract provider will take a proactive approach to looking after your business, addressing potential problems before they occur and giving you a long-term plan that accounts for growth or *failure*. This cuts those two major costs associated with IT failures: productivity losses and repair costs. You will not need to pay out for a replacement server, and you are not stuck with the repair bill either.
entrust IT have been supporting businesses of all sizes for many years, fixing issues before they become problems. Whether you are looking for immediate support for your traditional environment or management of your cloud environment, we have the expertise and experience required to give your business the service it needs to stay up and running in today’s online workplace. Take the first step towards a stress-free IT Infrastructure by getting in contact on 0330 002 0045 or email enquiries@entrustit.co.uk, to be put in contact with one of our experienced consultants.