The IT infrastructure of a modern business connects all aspects of its operations. Organizations rely on it to communicate, collaborate, and conduct transactions. If that infrastructure stops working, it can be costly. This is commonly referred to as “downtime” or “unplanned downtime,” and it’s something to be avoided as much as possible.
The key to avoiding business system downtime is understanding the nature of it and how most companies guard against it. It’s also important to recognize that downtime will likely happen despite the best-laid plans. Therefore, it’s critical to have a recovery plan in place so that your company can get back up and running after it goes through a bout of unplanned downtime.
Understanding System Downtime
While there are times when a network must be shut down for routine maintenance, upgrades, or updates, downtime generally refers to a network failure caused by an Internet outage, power outage, or anticipated technical failure.
The negative impact of downtime is different for every organization. For example, a large company that relies heavily on its network for online financial transactions might be devastated, while a small company that provides in-person services might see downtime as an annoying inconvenience.
Losing revenue and decreased productivity is bad enough, but downtime can also result in the loss of vital information. Therefore, it is critical for companies to regularly back up all of their most important data. If downtime is a frequent occurrence, it could have a serious negative impact on a company’s brand, increasing customer churn.
Causes and Costs of System Downtime
A wide range of factors can trigger business system downtime. Understanding the following causes of downtime can help you prevent it from happening and also quickly address downtime once it does occur.
Human Error
People make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes can cause massive system failure. For example, the accidental deletion of files at the Federal Aviation Administration in 2023 resulted in flight cancellations and delays across the United States.
Whether it’s the accidental deletion of files or neglecting to perform system updates, human error is a very common cause of system downtime. Organizations must follow best practices and hold regular training to protect against human error causing business system downtime.
After the event in 2023, the FAA repaired the system and put measures in place to prevent the same incident from happening again. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done, and the agency received a higher level of scrutiny after the downtime incident.
Malicious Activity
In addition to occasionally making mistakes, people can sometimes be downright malicious. Apathetic IT employees might take a lax attitude towards performing regular maintenance duties, resulting in downtime. Disgruntled or unethical employees are capable of even worse behavior. It should go without saying that companies need to screen their employees to make sure the people they bring in aren’t capable of intentionally causing downtime.
Cyberattacks
A cyberattack can have devastating consequences for an organization. In 2022, the American Dental Association was devastated by a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, which involves a server being intentionally flooded with internet traffic, causing it to crash. About 9 GB of sensitive data was stolen from the association, and about one-third of that data was leaked online.
Given the potential for catastrophic financial and reputational losses, downtime might be one of the lesser impacts of suffering a cyberattack. Companies should have robust cyber security measures in place and perform training to ensure their employees don’t fall victim to common cyberattacks.
Hardware Failure
Manufacturing defects, power surges, deteriorating equipment, and more can cause business system downtime. Hardware failure can affect companies of any size, as evidenced by an epic failure at Facebook in 2021. During routine maintenance, engineers accidentally disconnected the company’s data centers, causing an outage that affected billions of users. The resulting downtime ultimately led to the company facing allegations in a Senate hearing.
When one hardware component fails, it can have a cascading effect that causes wider damage. Regular maintenance and proactive monitoring can help to prevent hardware failure. Many organizations use backup measures to offset the potential impact of hardware failure.
Blackouts, Fires, and Natural Disasters
Sometimes, downtime is due to circumstances outside of our control. In 2022, Hurricane Ian caused widespread power outages that caused downtime at countless businesses. In some cases, business systems that were completely dependent on facilities without power experienced downtime that lasted several weeks.
Hurricanes, fires, building collapses, and other circumstances that damage or disrupt an IT infrastructure will cause all kinds of disruptions to a business, including downtime. While it’s difficult to completely protect against this cause of downtime, it is possible to have a business continuity system in place to help your company get back online and operational as soon as possible.
Partly dependent on the cause of downtime, the costs can be significant. Costs will also depend on the size of the business, the nature of the business, and the industries in which it operates. According to one study, the average cost of downtime is between $5,600 and $9,000 per minute.
That cost is lower for smaller businesses, with a different study showing a cost of $137 to $427 per minute for smaller organizations. While larger companies might be able to endure these costs, smaller companies operating on tight margins or at significant risk of going out of business if business system downtime persists.
Preventing and Mitigating System Downtime
Because of the potentially devastating costs, companies should put significant resources into ensuring that their IT infrastructure stays up and running. It is also important to use the following best practices and policies that can both prevent and mitigate business system downtime.
Use Proactive Maintenance
The old saying “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is true in many aspects of life, and it absolutely applies to preventing downtime. Proactive IT maintenance ensures that software is kept up-to-date and aging hardware is promptly replaced. The latter requires investment, but the cost of downtime caused by hardware failure often outweighs the price of buying new servers, cables, and other infrastructure.
Conduct Periodic Risk Assessments
While periodic maintenance is a general approach to preventing downtime, regular risk assessments allow companies to take a targeted approach and address emerging issues before they become disasters. Periodic risk assessments should cover all software, hardware, policies, and daily practices. Identifying and addressing risks not only prevents downtime but also has the potential to increase operational efficiency.
Use Network Monitoring
Network monitoring can prevent downtime by identifying potential causes and addressing them before they can cause a network failure. Network monitoring can also identify inefficiencies so those two can be addressed, keeping your network humming along as efficiently as possible.
Training
Given the fact that human error is a common cause of business system downtime, not regularly training staff on best practices is tantamount to malpractice. Regular training can raise awareness about ways to avoid downtime and prepare staff for handling situations involving it. When an incident does happen, your staff should know how to respond and quickly address the cause so downtime can be kept to a minimum.
Strategies for Minimizing Unplanned Downtime
Despite the best-laid plans, business system downtime happens to every organization, and there’s no way to avoid it. Successful companies embrace this reality and leverage the following strategies for minimizing unplanned downtime.
Have Communication Protocols in Place
Downtime should be considered a type of emergency situation, and like any emergency, communication is critical. The communication plan should outline the key contacts that must be identified when a situation involves downtime or potential downtime. There should also be a plan to inform employees, customers, and other critical stakeholders. Finally, there should be a plan for communicating regular updates until a downtime situation can be resolved.
Have a Disaster Recovery Plan
It is critical to have a plan for recovering from it. A disaster recovery plan should contain details on handling all kinds of potential causes, from natural disasters to cyberattacks. The most effective plans can limit the length of downtime and the amount of damage caused by it using a four-pronged approach:
- Risk and impact analysis. Identifying potential risks and the business impacts of downtime can help companies proactively address unplanned downtime and bolster systems designed to minimize it.
- Regular backups. Regularly backing up important data guys and insurance policy against unplanned downtime. A best practice is to store these backups offsite to guard against fires and natural disasters. While some companies handle their backups, others enlist the help of a third-party provider.
- Rapid access. Having backups readily available helps to accelerate recovery, minimizing disruptions and losses.
- Loss mitigation. A disaster recovery plan should include strategies for minimizing productivity loss, revenue loss, recovery costs, and damage to the company brand.
A good disaster recovery plan can minimize downtime in many different scenarios. When a business is struck by a hurricane or widespread flooding, having backups and remote locations would allow it to quickly restore its systems. If a company is hit by a ransomware attack, it can quickly restore clean versions of its systems by tapping into its backups. In a situation involving hardware failure, having access to backup hardware and data backups can help a company quickly get its operations back up and running.
Working with a third-party provider offers all kinds of benefits for recovering from downtime because the provider exists outside the company’s own IT infrastructure. A provider can provide cloud storage and backups that help a company get its systems back up and running.
Calculating the Financial Impact of Downtime
The financial impact of downtime is very specific to each organization. Therefore, companies must calculate the potential impacts on their organization. This is a valuable exercise because it helps to reveal where a business is most vulnerable and how it can address those vulnerabilities.
The following factors should be considered when calculating the financial impact of business system downtime:
- Revenue losses. These direct losses are fairly easy to calculate based on historical revenue data.
- Productivity losses. Lost productivity can be determined by calculating hourly wages and the amount of productivity dependent on the network.
- Recovery costs. Expenses related to data recovery, hardware repair, software recovery, and more are a big part of downtown’s financial impact.
- Reputational losses. Although it’s highly difficult to calculate, it is useful to gauge the impact of poor customer service and negative coverage on legacy media, digital media, and social media.
Adding together these primary costs of downtime can help to determine the financial impact and where your company stands to lose the most if its network goes down.
Want to Avoid Downtime? Taylored Systems Can Help Secure Your Business
At Taylored Systems, we have decades of experience helping companies both avoid downtime and quickly recover from it. Our technicians and engineers can help your company fortify its IT infrastructure and put a disaster recovery plan in place that is customized for your organization. We can also provide around-the-clock network monitoring and management if something happens to your network during off-hours.
In addition to protecting against business system downtime, we also offer a whole range of information technology solutions. Our managed IT services help your company with everything from network design and installation to helpdesk support. Our IT consulting services can help you address key business challenges, from cybersecurity to scaling up operations. Please contact us today to learn more about how Taylored Systems can support your company’s success.