By Jason Facer, Central Illinois Business Magazine contributor
Over the past few months, my columns have focused on some of the most serious threats to the security and integrity of your company’s electronic information. Unfortunately, these threats continue to multiply every day—in fact, Trend Micro, a leading manufacturer of antivirus and security software, estimates that a new virus or spyware threat is introduced across the Internet every 2.5 seconds. My previous columns have detailed various strategies to protect your business network against these threats; this month, I’ll address perhaps the most costly consequence of inadequate threat protection: system downtime.
Downtime, of course, can stem from other, less malicious sources, such as equipment failure, power outages, and employee error. Regardless of whether your network’s downtime was caused by a virus outbreak or the failure of an aging piece of hardware, the results are simply disastrous. To accurately estimate the impact system downtime can have on your business, consider the many ways downtime affects the daily cycle of business for your company.
First and foremost, if such downtime ultimately results in the loss of key data, the recovery of this information—or, in the worst-case scenario, the re-entry of some or all of the compromised data—can cost your company dearly. While data backup technology—such as offsite storage with bare-metal restoration capability—has advanced significantly over the past decade, the labor costs associated with restoring large amounts of data have the potential to deal an often fatal blow to an unprepared business.
Furthermore, when your company’s systems are down, your employees are unable to work. For institutions such as banks, downtime simply isn’t an option, as lost transactions and missed revenue opportunities grow every minute the network is down. In addition to the employee wages paid during periods of downtime, business owners should also weigh the consequences of missed sales opportunities and the loss of potential new customers due to system downtime.
Lastly, business owners must face a less tangible but entirely real consequence of downtime: reputation cost. In other words, will downtime be evident to customers, and, if so, will your business suffer client defection as a result of this downtime? For companies that conduct most or all of their business online using the Internet, the long-term price of downtime can be devastating.
My July column in the Central Illinois Business Magazine will address the need for businesses to adopt thorough disaster-recovery plans to ensure the aforementioned costs of downtime can be mitigated, if not avoided altogether. After all, disasters come in a variety of forms, many of which we’re powerless to prevent. Instead of hedging your bets on the hopes that “it won’t happen to me,” begin preparing a disaster-recovery plan for your business. I’ll discuss how to do so—and where your priorities should be—in next month’s column.
