How to Prevent Large-Scale IT Outages
We have observed major outages disrupting millions of people worldwide in recent years, including the infamous Crowdstrike outage of 2024 and the Meta outage of 2021. Incidents like these highlight the importance of improving business protection by enhancing IT systems to prevent devastating downtime.
Beyond revenue loss, outages can damage customer trust, harm business reputation, and create operational challenges in the future. To prepare your business for the worst and prevent similar situations, it’s essential to develop a proactive strategy that strengthens your security before issues occur.
Key takeaways
- Human error is one of the most common reasons for IT failures.
- On average, businesses lose $5,600 per minute due to large-scale outages.
- Proactive and layered security approaches can mitigate risk and help prevent costly outages.
Improve IT Security to Avoid Outages
Discover how Applied Tech can improve your IT security measures, provide enterprise-level solutions, and develop a cybersecurity strategy to safeguard your business from major outages.
What causes big IT failures?
Large-scale IT failures and unexpected outages can happen for various reasons, and every part of your cybersecurity and IT infrastructure may have vulnerabilities that could cause issues. Let’s look at some of the most common causes of outages businesses face and how to prevent them from happening to you.
Human error
Large-scale IT failures and unexpected outages can happen for various reasons, and every part of your cybersecurity and IT infrastructure may have vulnerabilities that could cause issues. Let’s look at some of the most common causes of outages businesses face and how to prevent them from happening to you.
Prevention: To prevent human error from causing an outage in your business, you should provide all employees with comprehensive training programs that are regularly updated. Offering them the knowledge they need to do their jobs efficiently and effectively will save them from making minor mistakes that turn into major issues. Additionally, strict change management protocols should be in place to ensure sensitive information is not accessible to unauthorized users. Finally, automating routine tasks and requiring quality assurance for critical actions will reduce the chance of mistakes and secure your business.
Software bugs
Software bugs and poor code releases are common causes of tech outages in businesses. These issues can arise from coding errors, lack of testing, or unexpected interactions between software components.
Prevention: Establish a solid testing process that includes regular coding reviews, thorough quality assurance, and continuous integration testing to detect issues early. Additionally, versioning control processes like pull requests, should be firmly established. Any feature branches require peer review and approval from specific individuals before changes can be made in the main codebase.
Cyberattacks
Cybercriminals may target your business if they can find a gap in your security. They will conduct malicious activity to disrupt your services, steal data, or cause damage to your infrastructure.
Prevention: Implement a robust cybersecurity strategy that combines both proactive and reactive measures, like layered security and incident response strategies. Begin with employee training to increase awareness of best practices, the importance of software updates, how to spot phishing emails, and more. Collaborate with IT professionals to review your current cybersecurity systems and identify areas for improvement to prevent attackers from gaining access.
High demand
While an increase in demand is positive for businesses, it can quickly turn into an IT nightmare if you’re not properly prepared. A sudden surge of orders or website activity can overwhelm internal systems or reveal that they are not designed to handle it, leading to shutdowns. This has often happened when companies promote events or exclusive deals.
Prevention: Invest in scalable IT solutions, load balancing, and load scaling technology. Regularly conduct performance testing and ensure you have contingency plans in place for peak times to keep all systems running during spikes.
Backup processes
Failures in the backup process can lead to an outage, especially when a primary system fails and the backup programs installed do not function as intended. This can result in improperly configured backups, corrupted data, and inadequate testing.
Prevention: Regularly conduct backup and recovery tests, and develop a comprehensive disaster recovery plan that has been tested to ensure large-scale recoveries will work when needed.
Network issues
These issues include problems with the internet service provider, routers, or other network equipment. Hardware failures, configuration errors, or external factors like an accidental cable cut can also cause them. While some of these issues are not the business’s fault, they can still cause an outage that will affect your users.
Prevention: Ensure that network monitoring and management practices are in place, and utilize redundant network paths and automated failover systems to maintain connectivity during any disruptions.
Big IT failures can result from a mix of preventable problems and unexpected challenges, highlighting the need for proactive strategies. By addressing these potential causes of outages before they occur, businesses can significantly lower the risk of a failure.
Implementing comprehensive training programs, thorough testing, strong cybersecurity measures, and scalable IT systems will safeguard operations. The key to preventing a major outage lies in a layered approach that combines preparation, monitoring, and flexibility.
What is the average cost of outages for businesses?
According to Gartner, an outage can cost a business an average of $5,600 per minute or $330,000 per hour in lost revenue. Larger enterprises can lose between $1 million and $5 million in revenue in one hour, not to mention the loss of valuable time that employees could be using on revenue-generating tasks.
Besides direct revenue loss, businesses also face regulatory and legal fines when outages occur. Often, outages cause violations of compliance standards, resulting in costly legal consequences. On average, an organization loses $22 million annually due to legal fines or penalties from system failures and compliance breaches.
While recovering from an outage, businesses must also manage the reactions of their customers, partners, and stakeholders. Many may worry that another outage could occur and wonder if their loyalty should still be with your company. According to Oxford Economics, 40% of CMOs say that a major outage directly impacts the customer lifetime value at a company.
4 Tips to prevent IT failure
Preventing IT failures requires a proactive security approach that emphasizes technology and the people who use it. Combining training materials and resources, thorough planning, and consistent monitoring will help reduce the risk of downtime and data loss. The following four tips offer practical, actionable steps you can take to prepare and safeguard your business.
Conduct employee awareness training
Your team of employees can be one of your strongest defenses against IT outages. With proper security awareness training, regularly updated resources, and open communication with your IT department, your teams will know how to operate software and hardware safely in their roles.
Ensure each employee knows how to access tech support and keeps that information in a secure place for reference. Additionally, hold training sessions on how to identify common threats like phishing emails or scams involving unauthorized access.
Build a disaster recovery plan for business
Even with the most extensive preventative measures in place, there is always a risk of technology issues. A disaster recovery plan (DRP) ensures that your business can quickly and effectively restore operations after unexpected outages. With a detailed strategy, your team can minimize downtime, reduce data loss, mitigate financial repercussions, protect your reputation, and avoid regulatory penalties.
A strong DRP begins with pinpointing exactly where your data resides within your current IT environment. Dispersed backups across various locations can be challenging to manage and restore. Using a single centralized storage site with regular backup testing ensures your data remains secure and is easy to recover when needed.
Prioritize hardware lifecycle management
Consistent hardware maintenance routines will ensure that computers, routers, and other devices are in optimal condition. This monitoring will mitigate unexpected breakdowns and costly downtime while providing your business with a proactive strategy to identify when devices need to be replaced or upgraded.
If your business lacks the resources to perform regular maintenance checks on your hardware systems, consider outsourcing your IT and cybersecurity efforts to a third-party vendor. An IT partner can provide your business access to enterprise-grade technology, customized services tailored to your industry needs, and a team of IT experts to collaborate with your company.
Create ongoing cybersecurity efforts
Cybersecurity is not a one-time project; it’s an ongoing process that must adapt to the evolving threats and digital environment in which your business operates. As cybercriminals develop more sophisticated attacks, businesses need to stay agile in their defense strategies. Your cybersecurity plan is a crucial part of your overall business strategy.
Regularly testing your systems, networks, and security protocols helps your team identify gaps before hackers can exploit them. This includes performing regular penetration tests, examining firewalls, and updating software and firmware when necessary.
The ability to improve your cybersecurity measures depends on continuously training your internal IT teams. Provide ongoing education for employees at all levels so they stay informed on the latest threats and security best practices. A highly skilled team combined with a strong, current cybersecurity strategy will keep your organization protected.
Although no organization is completely protected from unexpected IT failures, a solid prevention plan can mean the difference between a brief delay and a major disruption that costs your business millions of dollars. Focusing on employee awareness, dependable IT systems, and adaptable cybersecurity strategies helps build a resilient IT infrastructure. Investing in these preventive measures now will ensure stability for your business over time.
Improve IT Security to Avoid Outages
Discover how Applied Tech can improve your IT security measures, provide enterprise-level solutions, and develop a cybersecurity strategy to safeguard your business from major outages.
Build your business protection plan with Applied Tech
A strong IT environment and cybersecurity strategy is necessary to safeguard your business from expensive outages and operational disruptions. Building a comprehensive, layered approach will handle vulnerabilities within your system, strengthen your current defenses or introduce you to new ones, and ensure your systems are prepared to withstand unforeseen obstacles.
With a partner like Applied Tech on your side, you will gain access to a team of IT and cybersecurity experts who can guide you through creating and maintaining this protection, so your teams can prioritize their daily tasks. Together, we will develop a proactive approach that will secure your operations, stabilize your systems, and prepare your business for anything.
Contact our team today to learn how we can work together to improve your business protection.
About Applied Tech
Applied Tech is a leading IT and cybersecurity services provider dedicated to helping businesses protect their digital assets. Our proactive and strategic services include cloud management, security, productivity, and IT growth strategy. With a team of experienced professionals, we provide unique solutions tailored to your IT needs.
Protect your business with Applied Tech’s fully managed IT services, co-managed support, and security assistance. With IT services focused on your business goals, keep your team productive and your data secure.
Author: Kris Cears
