These are the negative impacts of IT system failures on your business

Many companies in Salt Lake City would not be able to operate as well as they do without IT. It helps in keeping costs low, improves the security, speed, and consistency of various processes, and generally makes life easier for employees.

How can IT system failure affect businesses?

Because of how crucial technology is, the impacts of IT system failure on businesses can be severe and numerous. Here are some of them:

1. Reduced productivity

When IT systems go down, your employees cannot use or access the equipment and resources they need to do their jobs. This causes longer turnaround times and delayed outputs.

Unexpected outages can also hurt your workers’ states of mind. Some may become stressed, while others may have difficulty regaining their focus after the sudden interruption.

2. Loss of important resources

Your business could lose irreplaceable data during an unplanned IT outage. If your servers were to fail, for instance, the information stored on them become inaccessible. These files could be as crucial as customer information, sales records, financial statements, or trade secrets. If these files were never backed up anytime before the outage, then you may lose them forever.

If system failures happen frequently, your business will become less efficient and competitive, making it harder to sell products and services.

3. Increased risk of human error

You could lose access to tools that automate crucial processes during an IT system failure. This will force your employees to perform these processes manually.

If your workers are already stressed out by the system interruption, then they are likely to make mistakes. This could be as simple as misspelling words or as severe as mixing up numbers on financial reports. Such errors can result in wasted resources and serious delays.

4. Damaged reputation

Trustworthiness is key to attracting and keeping customers. You want to demonstrate to your clients that you can protect their data and consistently deliver expected results within reasonable deadlines. IT system failures can prevent you from fulfilling these promises, which can lead to a significant blow to your company’s reputation. Disgruntled clients may then take their business elsewhere, and you may have a hard time convincing them to come back.

5. Lost revenue

If system failures happen frequently, then you would eventually lose revenue. Your business will become less efficient and competitive, making it harder to sell products and services. What’s more, outages will cause you to incur additional expenses on repairs and replacements.

What can you do to prevent IT system failures?

IT system failure can happen anytime, but you can take these steps to minimize its negative impacts:

Be proactive about maintenance

Instead of following a break-fix approach to IT management, wherein you act only when something goes wrong, take a proactive approach to maintenance. This means regularly checking your devices and software for vulnerabilities and addressing them before they worsen and cause system failures.

Invest in redundancies

Redundancy means having two or more systems in place to support critical processes. Should one system fail, the others can immediately take over, preventing prolonged interruptions. For example, you could invest in extra servers to back up your main one and buy uninterruptible power supply units to keep your devices running during power outages.

Boost your business’s cybersecurity

Outages can occur because of cyberattacks. Augmenting your cybersecurity posture not only reduces the risk of cyberattacks hitting your business, but doing so can also mitigate an incident’s effects when it does occur.

Implement a disaster recovery plan

A disaster recovery plan (DRP) covers everything you need to do to minimize downtime and data loss during an IT system failure. This typically includes steps like backing up data and allocating resources for quick repairs. A DRP is essential if you want to quickly resume your operations following an outage.

Train your employees

Your employees should know what to do during system failures. They should also be familiar with your DRP and other contingency plans. Training them on these can reduce mistakes and ensure that everyone knows their roles in keeping the business running during outages.

IT system failure can have far-reaching effects on your business, so it’s important to take steps to prevent them or mitigate their effects. On top of following the above tips, you can also partner with [company_short]. Our team of IT specialists will proactively lower your risk of experiencing outages by keeping your systems in top condition. We can also help you design and implement strategies to dampen the effects of system failures. Contact us today for more information about our services.

Avoid these 6 critical mistakes during disaster recovery

Disasters like fires and malware attacks can strike your business at any time. When they do, it’s crucial to have a disaster recovery (DR) plan in place to mitigate their impact on your business. Unfortunately, many businesses make critical mistakes that can significantly slow down the disaster recovery process. In this blog post, we’ll take a look at six of these blunders and how you can avoid them.

1. You don’t have a DR plan

If your business doesn’t have a DR plan, it will be difficult to recover from incidents. Your recovery teams won’t know what to do and will make last-minute assumptions, resulting in a longer and costlier recovery process.

By having a proper DR plan, you can better assess the scenarios that threaten your operations and how to combat them. Your plan provides specific recovery instructions so teams know what to do when disaster strikes. What’s more, it identifies technology solutions that facilitate the recovery process like cloud backups and provides directions on how they should be used.

2. The DR plan is outdated

Over time, the information in your DR plan may become outdated and key personnel may leave the company. You may also replace your IT systems and face newly emerged cyberthreats

For instance, if your DR plan didn’t include the threat of ransomware and such a malicious program infected your system, you may encounter issues recovering from the incident.

By regularly reviewing and updating your DR plan, you ensure that it’s always relevant and effective. Updated DR plans and briefings also guarantee your team is well versed in the latest disaster recovery procedures and know how to handle disruptive incidents.

3. You don’t test the plan

Some organizations make the mistake of creating a DR plan and then just setting it aside. By not testing the plan, no one knows if it will actually work and your team will not know what to do in the event of a disaster.

It’s vital to test your DR plan annually to determine the effectiveness of proposed procedures. One way to do this is by simulating recovery tests. For instance, you could stage a malware attack to see how well teams respond to it. You should also practice using technologies that support recovery procedures to see if they actually work as expected.

4. Your backups are stored in only one basket

Backups are a fundamental part of disaster recovery, as these ensure that you can recover your files and applications in case of data loss. However, storing all your backups in a single location is ill-advised because you can lose all your files if the backup facility becomes inaccessible or compromised.

Avoid this issue by implementing hybrid backups, which combine an on-site backup with replicated cloud backups. This way, if your on-site backup is destroyed or inaccessible, you can access another copy in another location.

5. Not getting everyone involved

It’s a big mistake to assume that only IT departments are responsible for disaster recovery. Instead, everyone on your team from senior management to rank-and-file employees should be aware of the security risks facing your business and play an active role in mitigating them.

Start by training your staff regularly in cybersecurity best practices. For example, teach them to be critical of every email or website they open and to refrain from downloading suspicious files. You can also simulate a cyberattack to test your employees’ reaction times. This will help you identify your teams’ strengths and areas for improvement to prepare your business for future cyberattacks.

6. Not having a disaster recovery partner

Choosing the right disaster recovery partner can spell the difference between success and failure when recovering from disruptive events. Without one, your business will have to take responsibility for data restoration, systems replacement, and other critical processes that are beyond your expertise. And that’s all too much to take on alone

Fortunately, reliable managed IT services providers like NetWize have extensive knowledge of disaster recovery. We can provide you with 24/7 technical support during disasters and help restore your operations quickly. Give us a call today.