The 5 Main Causes of IT Downtime (and how to mitigate them)
The 5 Main Causes of System Failure and Downtime
Media Failure
Most of todays backups go straight to a disk. However, if your system still uses tapes or other rudimentary forms of backup, media failures may be a risk.
The simple solution is to modernize your system. If this is not possible or too costly, services exist that offer a bridge between the antiquated systems of old and the modern systems of the present. Contego has many custom and off-the-shelf solutions for this problem and, if desired can run a full modernization service.
Human Error
People mess up. All the time. Limiting human error can be the easiest albeit a costly solution to this problem. Investing heavily in education can be time intensive and expensive. However, it will pay off. Effective educational campaigns and employee training will make your systems more robust and less likely to fail.
Contego offers webinars with general info that help with this increasingly challenging problem. Additionally, we offer full IT educational services so you can take a hands-off approach to mitigating human error.
Software Updates
IT systems can be delicate and prone to failure. Software updates, especially those that create incompatibility only exasperates this issue. Staying up to date on system compatibility is a full-time job, and not something worth handing off to an intern or an already overworked employee.
Compatibility audits are easy, inexpensive, and efficient methods of mitigating this issue. Contego offers compatibility audits, ensuring your system won’t fail when a needed software updates comes through.
Cyber Attacks
The most frightening IT words are “cyber attack” and for good reason! Cyber attacks are increasing in prevalence and many organizations are poorly or completely unprepared to fend them off. These attacks can be simple phishing attacks, initiated through email or other bad links. Or, they can be complete take-overs of an organizations online resources and often held for ransom. Cyber attacks can not only limit an organizations ability to function, they can completely destroy the business.
Effective fire wall systems and other IT security measures are a necessity for any organization, regardless of online presence (everyone has data stored somewhere online these days). Educational campaigns are one way to mitigate these attacks. Another is an IT security audit, where a firm identifies the weak links and gaps in an organizations’ online security.
Contego is currently offering a free IT audit. Protect your organization before an attack happens. It’s worth it.
Infrastructure Failure
This is perhaps the most difficult to mitigate and currently, the most relevant. On July 8th, 2022 Rogers Canada experienced a nation-wide outage that has directly affected more than 30% of Canadians (including us). These failures are difficult to avoid. If the network you operate on crashes, you are unable to do many of the things required to run your organization. It sucks. Beyond the frustrations of being incapable of working, these failures can result in lost data or the inability to access data. For this reason, hybrid systems can be highly effective. Hybrid systems bridge the gap between online (often cloud) based systems and offline (hardware) systems. Offline systems can be expensive (when built on a large scale) and are often overlooked by many organizations for this reason alone. However, current technologies offer cost-effective methods of capitalizing on the emergence of inexpensive and attainable hybrid platforms.
Contego is an expert and implementing and maintaining these hybrid systems, for many different types and sizes of organizations. If your organizations is currently struggling with a predominantly online system, you will benefit from a hybrid system.
Bridge the gap between your online and offline capabilities and mitigate the risk of downtime & failure by choosing Contego.
Our clients are our brand advocates. We strive to go above and beyond for everyone we work with.
Our IT guy no longer feels like he’s alone. He can take the time he needs off without worrying about IT problems while away.
Contego helped us solve a 3-day problem. We had a report that just wouldn’t run efficiently on our system. Contego helped tune our database and the maintenance report was able to run in minutes instead of days.
I wanted to thank your team for your excellent support during the recent power outage in. Your team was truly an extension of ours in that event and provided excellent support.
Thanks to Contego, our IT worries are a thing of the past! Our new IT approach is completely hands-off.
We just love the Contego team. They’ve helped us with our issues and have taught us so much. We don’t feel bad about asking when we don’t know things because we know we’re going to get a respectful and educated answer.
Get a FREE Assessment!
Valued at $1050!
