Common Reasons for Downtime
One of the major concerns of companies across the globe is IT downtime. Regardless of their location or annual revenue, businesses can incur huge damages once their network is struck by technological failures.
Over the last few years, even the smallest companies face the risk of downtime. In fact, IT outages or network disruption are common in the news. Good thing data backup services in Germantown and other areas can help mitigate the effects of these troubles.
But why do IT outages happen? Here are some of the common reasons.
1. Human Error
The usual cause for IT downtime is human error. While it is almost impossible to completely avoid making mistakes, being careful can go a long way. If your company wants to avoid network outage due to human error, employees should follow set protocols or standards such as:
Take note of each task step-by-step to make sure that a standard procedure is always followed. IT employees should be updated on the latest device configurations and security challenges. Put in place secure access policies so the network does not fall into the wrong hands. Hire data backup services in Germantown so you can easily recover in case of a disaster. If you have a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy, see to it that your entire team understands it well.
2. Security Issues
If your network isn't properly secured, you are making your data vulnerable to hackers. Once attackers encroach the LAN or WAN, you might experience downtime. Many businesses believe that security problems can result in network and system outages. What you can do to prevent security flaws is by having a proactive security strategy to deal with emerging threats.
3. Understaffed IT Departments
There are a number of tasks needed to be done to ensure smooth functions of an enterprise's network, applications, and servers. If the company does not have enough employees to monitor or manage updates, then an IT downtime could happen. In order to avoid this issue, the management should allot a budget to hire dedicated staff that will be responsible for providing IT needs.
4. Old Equipment and Software
The older your network hardware and software are, the more likely they can trigger an outage. Equipment that was running perfectly a few years ago may not be able to keep up with today's modern technology. In such cases, performance dwindles and crashes occur.
Every outdated, obsolete, or unsupported device or software is a potential risk to your network. Companies that use outdated hardware and software may experience IT problems like data traffic flow congestion and the inability to execute complex applications. When this happens, server downtime is inevitable.
To avoid long-term outages, guarantee that you keep your IT environment up-to-date. Take the time to make an inventory of your equipment and be proactive in planning upgrades where needed. It is ideal to replace your servers on a five-year basis.
5. Instability of Server Hardware
Even though your server hardware is up to date and there is no traffic bottleneck, there are times when the server still acts unstable. This could happen when IT staff install new applications to old equipment. The instability of the server may consequently cause a network problem in their company.
Servers crash due to defective ram, power supply glitches, damage to hard disk platter, bugs, firmware upgrades, and more. To help your company dodge IT outages from unstable servers, your network needs 24/7 monitoring. This will ensure timely replacement and a healthy environment to avoid downtime.
6. Incompatible Operating System
There have been reports that IT outages can be caused by networks that are incompatible to new computers. Often, IT managers get themselves updated with the latest hardware yet they forget to update their software. However, servers may not work smoothly due to mismatched operating systems. As such, they should ensure to be on top of both hardware and software updates to avoid any significant IT outages.
If you want to be certain that your company would not face downtime, proactive assessment of your software and hardware is critical. By knowing what's happening on your IT infrastructures, you can ensure that employees and customers have access to the services they need most.
Swift's Best Data Backup Services Germantown
As a managed IT service provider, Swift Systems have the experience and tools that you need to identify various threats to the organizations and ensure that your IT functions smoothly. We can prevent any critical device and enterprise network from experiencing downtime.