In May 2021, the Colonial Pipeline, which transports gasoline and other fuels from Texas to New York, was hit by a ransomware attack. which resulted in the shutdown of the pipeline, caused fuel shortages, and gas prices spiked in several states. The company ultimately paid a ransom of around $4.4 million to the hackers to regain access to its systems.
As much as we might wish otherwise, mission-critical emergencies can and do happen. While the initial focus is on correcting the problem, it's also essential to do a postmortem of what occurred. This means you look at what went wrong and determine if the situation was avoidable or inevitable.
In the IT world, new processes and solutions are released every day that promise to overhaul systems, streamline activities and generally make life easier for the department. But the problem is these disparate plug-and-play patches are often not designed to serve as holistic solutions.
No one wants an emergency to delay or completely halt daily operations. But even with a state-of-the-art IT department, this reality can’t be completely avoided.
You’re an IT service provider with a client account where a critical server that manages payment processing just crashed. You need to get that server operational immediately. And every minute that it’s down can represent thousands in lost revenue for your client.
You’ve been brought on as an outside IT provider. Your company’s primary purpose is to oversee routine IT needs. But more importantly, you’re the first line of defense if your client’s system crashes, experiences an outage, or any other issue that interrupts routine or critical operations.
Disaster recovery planning is a set of business practices that allow an organization to defend against downtime, ensure stability, and mitigate problems during IT-related events.
When you think of a cyberattack, you might think of a basement-dwelling teenager spending hours trying to break into business networks.
Cyber security isn’t just a matter of IT. Adequate security relies on system-wide coordination among people and processes, touching every aspect of IT administration.
Compared to the previous years, 2021 saw a significant increase in cyberattacks. IoT rose by 6%, cryptojacking rose 19%, and ransomware attacks rose by a staggering 105% between 2020 and 2021. Regardless of the size of a company, having adequate cybersecurity equipment and protocols is essential for any successful business.
IT downtime is a certainty in any business. Even with advanced cybersecurity planning and ironclad disaster recovery tools, most companies will eventually need to contend with a loss of system operation.
Famed American poet Robert Frost wrote “good fences make good neighbors” in his 1914 poem, “Mending Wall.” While the literati might like to spend countless hours parsing every word in that phrase, we’re taking it more literally.
Anyone who's ever worked in a client-facing role knows that contrary to the adage, silence is not golden. Client relationships — especially contractual obligations and expectations for deliverables — require healthy and effective communication.
“If you have ten priorities,” a wise person once said, “then you have no priorities.” Nowhere is this more true than in the world of IT incident management. All IT incidents are a top priority–to the people affected by them.
In a perfect world, companies would never experience business relationships with service providers, vendors, or even clients where a disconnect occurs. Instead, everyone would be in sync, and as a result business would run smoothly. The reality, however, can be quite different.
Any textbook or guide on organizational performance management will tell you that you can’t improve what you don’t measure. The whole idea of key performance indicators (KPIs) is that they provide a brief measurement of some performance metric based on accurate data.
No matter how many preventative strategies are implemented by a company, incidents can and do happen. Whether a factory has a production line that suddenly fails, or a retailer's EDI system goes down, problems will ensue.
Alarms systems are central to creating a safe and efficient work environment. They quickly detect and alert your personnel about problems and abnormal conditions in your work environment. That enables your team to take immediate corrective measures to restore normality and safeguard lives and property.
Most businesses have some form of alarm system in place to monitor employee safety or the security of the premises. The effectiveness of these systems relies heavily on the speed and accuracy of the responses they generate.
Life is unpredictable in today’s world. You can’t be too prepared for an emergency. Keeping your workers safe and informed is a top priority to avoid costly lawsuits and protect your business from service interruption. Traditionally, emails, push notifications, and phone calls were the way to go, but they’re not as effective.
