"Sorry we are closed, please call again soon” when it comes to mission-critical systems this statement just doesn’t cut it in the real world.
With competitors constantly trying to persuade customers to make a switch fully operational systems, with no detrimental downtime recorded, could be a winner. We all know that downtime happens in IT but that downtime needs to be measured in minutes and seconds for mission-critical services; the recovery needs to be smooth and fast to ensure the disruptions are kept to a minimum.After some high profile downtime affecting large corporations including RBS and O2 recently the threat of not being able to recover quickly from a disaster has once again risen to a priority. With the superior ICT systems used by large global organizations the infrastructure should be resilient and to most are regarded as disaster proof. The shock that rippled across the IT professionals and business owner communities with the revelation that the RBS disruption was caused by a software upgrade rather than one of malicious cyber-attack or natural disaster, was one of disbelief. Boardrooms across the globe suddenly started to question could this happen to us?
As we head into hurricane season for the US of which a potential 13 storms have been identified, “6 of which are expected to become hurricanes, including 3 major hurricanes” (source: http://www.weather.com/news/weather-hurricanes/hurricane-season-outlook-july-20120724) and with natural disasters like the devastating Japanese earthquakes and tsunami to even the severe power outages that India has been experiencing over the past week, it really brings business continuity planning into sharp focus for businesses.
The results released at the beginning of the year from the ‘Horizon Scan 2012’ report by BCI, (http://www.bcifiles.com/BCIHorizonScan2012.pdf) which was based on 458 organizations across 49 countries highlights what organizations feel are their biggest threats to possible IT downtime and business shutdown.
“74% of organizations were either ‘concerned’ or ‘extremely concerned’ about possible unplanned IT and telecom outages.”
Sector
|
Top
3 Threats
|
“Extremely
Concerned” plus “Concerned” (%)
|
Average
score across the full scale (1= not concerned; 4 = extremely concerned)
|
Financial
Services
(Base
= 124)
|
1.
Unplanned IT/telecom outage
2.
Cyber attack
3.
Data breach
|
80%
71%
68%
|
3.15
2.99
2.90
|
Information
& Communications
(Base
= 77)
|
1.
Unplanned IT/telecom outage
2.
Data breach
3.
Cyber attack
|
81%
77%
75%
|
3.11
3.14
3.01
|
Professional
Services
(Base
= 70)
|
1.
Data breach
2.
Unplanned IT/telecom outage
3.
Cyber attack
|
66%
65%
60%
|
2.82
2.87
2.83
|
Public
Administration
(Base
= 43)
|
1.
Adverse weather
2.
Unplanned IT/telecom outage
3.
Human illness
|
74%
60%
60%
|
2.86
2.76
2.64
|
Manufacturing
(Base
= 17)
|
1.
Supply chain disruption
2.
Unplanned IT/telecom outage
3.
Product safety incident
|
76%
71%
53%
|
3.00
2.82
2.71
|
Health
and Social Care
(Base
= 17)
|
1.
Adverse weather
2.
Data breach
3.
Unplanned IT/telecom outage
|
69%
69%
63%
|
3.00
2.94
3.00
|
Utilities
(Base = 17)
|
1.
Cyber attack
2.
Adverse weather
3.
Interruption to utility supply
|
82%
81%
77%
|
3.12
3.13
3.18
|
Other insightful statistics that can be gleaned from this report also include the geographical stance on disaster recovery from natural disasters/adverse weather was higher on the scale for those that have recently seen first-hand the disastrous effects that this type of threat can have.
“Not surprisingly in Japan, consideration of an ‘earthquake/tsunami’ scored 3.38, in fact every respondent was either ‘extremely concerned’ or ‘concerned’.”
The top five threats identified across the full base of respondents, were as follows:
- Unplanned IT and telecom outages – 74%
- Data breach (i.e. loss or theft of confidential information) – 68%
- Cyber-attack (e.g. malware, denial of service) – 65%
- Adverse weather (e.g. windstorm/ tornado, flooding, snow, drought) – 59%
- Interruption to utility supply (i.e. water, gas, electricity, waste disposal) – 56%
Other additional and more specific risks ranged from the: Impact of the 2012 Olympics; Raw material prices; Reputational damage via the use of social networking; Escalation of the euro financial crisis and Vandalism/theft.
The report really highlights that time-specific events also create an impact on disaster preparedness, as this report was collated before other recent events such as the O2 and RBS network and IT failures, the results for next year’s report could show an even heavier stress placed on the ‘unplanned IT and telecom outages’ due to the world’s media coverage of these two potentially reputational damaging downtime.
2012 so far, has shown the world that downtime is disastrous to organizations even the giant corporations that were deemed indestructible, have shown their weaknesses to the world in their basic service offerings, customers don’t accept downtime counted in minutes let alone hours, days and weeks! With O2 out of action for around 24 hours for many of its customers and RBS failures moving into weeks of system disruption, confidence in providing the basic core facilities that these organizations are based on - ability to make and receive calls and confidence in account balances has rocked the levels of customer trust and loyalty, which some may never trust the services again and leave. RBS group have currently set aside £125 million for dealing with the fallout of the computer glitch that locked many RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank customers out of their accounts. But these are not the first companies to have epic failures to their IT systems, in November 2011 RIM (Blackberry) also suffered an almost total outage for their European customer base, the use of Blackberry handsets saw a massive loss of customer confidence. September 2010, in Australia saw 50,000 customers of Virgin Blue airlines travel plans were disrupted by an IT failure.
Now is the time for CEO’s and senior management to ask ‘how would we recover from a similar situation?’
The purpose of a disaster recovery plan is essential, but having a plan is not enough, the need to test, test and test again, is crucial to make sure your ICT systems are robust and ensure that backups and recoveries can happen, whether onsite or remotely.
Does the ITDR plan look at:
- Time critical - How long does it take to get your critical data back up and running?
- Prioritising - which systems and servers need to be restored in what order?
- Which staff need to be involved – can additional training for branches, stores, centres, or each office be applied so that more than one person knows the strategy and can perform a recovery.
- Location(s) - Where is your data backed up? Whole locations can be completed disrupted by fire, power outages or natural disaster - is your critical data also stored offsite?
- Who can perform the recovery? Ensure staff understand the stages of restoring data
- Easy to use software? Step-by-step guides?
- Technical support offered by suppliers – contacts for help and advice, are they easy to find?
- What happens if email systems are down or the telephone network has failed? Multiple-technology contacts available?
At Cristie our business is Bare Machine Recovery!
BMR whether physical, virtual or cloud we have the experience and solutions to help your organization recover data and servers quickly and efficiently to get your business back up and running in accordance to your set RTOs (Recovery Time Objectives). We have over 2,000 end users with 110,000+ licenses in use in over 70 Countries. Our customer support is second to none and available 24/7 365 days a year for all priority one issues.Sold through IBM and other leading resellers, we are confident our solutions can help organizations of any size from 1 license to 20,000 we have experience in tailoring software that suits your needs.
Email sales@cristie.com for more information or visit the website to view the product suite http://www.cristie.com/products/disaster-recovery/
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