IT Outages: How to Avoid Them

Basic terms explained

​​An outage means that the database system can’t work properly and can’t help users with their tasks. There are two kinds of outages: unplanned (unexpected) and planned (scheduled).

Unplanned outages

Unplanned outages are when something unexpected goes wrong with a computer system. For example, if a part of the system, like the hardware or software, stops working, or someone accidentally deletes an important file. Also, if the system is not set up properly, it can cause problems.

Planned outages

Sometimes, websites or apps may not be available for a short time because of planned outages. This can happen for two main reasons: maintenance and upgrades.

Software maintenance involves doing work to keep the website or app working properly and develop it. Sometimes, this work may require the website or app to shut down completely quickly. 

Upgrades involve adding new features or technology to the website or app. Sometimes, this may require the website or app to be partially or completely shut down for a short time while the changes are made.

Outages can happen to everyone

Even the best software development teams and products can have problems and not work properly sometimes. It’s not good, but it happens, and we can’t always prevent it from happening. However, there are things we can do to try to fix it, and we’ll talk about those in this article.

In numbers, please

​Uptime Institute 2022 Outage Report says that 4 in 5 companies had an outage in the last 3 years. And the number of companies reporting such issues increases (77% in 2020, 76% in 2021, and 80% in 2022). 

Also, outages last longer. However, most outages are fixed in less than 4 hours; the outages lasting 40+ have increased 4 times since 2017. 

Over the last five years, fixing major technical issues affecting many people has taken longer. In 2021, almost 30% of these issues lasted more than 24 hours, a significant increase from just 8% in 2017.

Check the numbers by Logic Monitor

source: Logic Monitor​

Why is it important?

A recent survey by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) and BigPanda showed that unplanned outages could cost businesses a lot of money - $12,900 per minute on average! 

The cost varies depending on the business size, so larger companies must pay even more. 

For instance, businesses with over 20,000 employees can end up paying $25,402 per minute, a staggering $1.52 million per hour.

Here are also other statistics by Queue-it:

source: Queue-it 

Technical issues like outages and slow service can lead to a bad customer experience for businesses selling goods or services to customers. This can have a big impact on whether customers will stay loyal to a company or not.

• PwC found that after just one bad experience, a third of customers will leave a company they like, and after two or three bad experiences, 92% will leave. 
• A survey by Fullstory showed that if a customer encounters an error, 77% will leave the website without buying anything, and 60% won’t come back later. 
• In addition, 65% will trust the company less after a problem. IT issues are especially likely to happen during busy times like Black Friday or a big product launch when there’s a sudden surge of users, which makes the problem even worse.

Causes of outages and how to avoid them

• Human Error
  

Around 40% of companies have experienced a significant system failure due to a mistake made by an employee. Although it is difficult to prevent human error, these mistakes usually happen because workers decide to avoid adhering to established procedures or guidelines.

Steps to follow:

1. Write down the steps for each task so that everyone always follows the same procedure.
2. Ensure your employees are up-to-date on the latest security updates and device settings.
3. Set up secure access rules to prevent unauthorized access to your network.
4. If your team uses their own devices for work, ensure everyone knows and follows the same policies.

• Security Flaws

If there is a weakness in a network, it may give hackers a chance to get into the LAN or WAN, which can cause the network to be down.

Steps to follow:

1. Your company should have a well-planned and proactive security plan to address new security risks. 
2. Before copying any code, confirm the source’s credibility. 
3. To protect confidential information, encrypt sensitive data. 
4. You need someone knowledgeable about Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance to keep up with regular updates and the latest technologies.
5. Use multi-factor authentication.

Also, take outsourcing software services like web, mobile, or dapp audits to check your product for security vulnerabilities. Specialists will find issues influencing its performance and development and advise on how to fix them.

• Internet or power outages

Almost half of the significant outages that cause downtime and financial loss are caused by power-related issues. Unfortunately, preventing power and internet outages is challenging since they are usually unpredictable.

Steps to follow:

1. CGS-team’s (software development services company) specialists are in Europe and ensured a necessary backup. That’s what you have to do. 
2. Contract with a cable internet provider and FiOS or fiber-optic internet service provider. 

• Hardware issues 

If your servers are down, your employees won’t be able to finish their tasks, which can disrupt your business activities.

Steps to follow:

1. It’s important to keep your hardware current. 
2. An IT specialist named Rod McGarrigle recommends replacing your servers every five years to avoid issues. 
3. To prevent hardware failure, it’s a good idea to have backup systems, such as duplicate firewalls, switches, routers, and networks. It’s also essential to conduct regular device evaluations.
   

• Server

Using outdated server operating systems can cause IT downtime. There are many reasons why servers can crash, such as firmware upgrades, bugs, hard disk damage, power supply issues, and faulty RAM.

Steps to follow:

1. Make sure that you are using a compatible operating system.
2. Monitor your network. 

You need a plan

To reduce the risk of outages, you have to take preventative measures, but they can still happen, so having a disaster recovery plan is vital. This plan outlines the policies and procedures to minimize the effects of a disaster. Here are some key steps to creating a plan:

1. Assign team responsibilities based on strengths to maximize effectiveness and confidence.
2. Craft a public response to keep customers and the public informed about any IT crises.
3. Allocate the company’s resources (for software development, too) and documents during the IT response.
4. Determine what’s critical, such as customer records or sensitive company data, and prioritize accordingly.
5. Create detailed documents for the plan so that it can be accessed easily during an IT disaster.
   

To sum up, 

Organizations that have policies and procedures to prevent IT issues from causing problems are more likely to avoid outages entirely. By preventing outages, organizations can avoid incurring any costs associated with them.