Imagine waking up to find your company’s systems down, customers unable to fully use the services they bought from your business, or vital projects stalling due to unforeseen tech failures. This was the reality for many businesses in July of this year (2024) due to the Crowdstrike outage. Understanding how to avoid a future IT crisis is not only possible but also very necessary for businesses.
In this article, we’ll explore proactive strategies to help you fortify your organization against unexpected tech turmoil.
We’ll break down actionable steps that can make all the difference when a disaster like a Crowdstrike outage “strikes” again. Let’s delve into some essentials of IT support resilience and discover how simple daily tasks today can save you from significant headaches tomorrow.
Have a Plan
Having a well-structured plan is a necessity to avoid a future IT crisis. Even if your plan isn’t that great, it’s better than not having any plan at all. Your plan is your business’s IT strategy to protect your current operation and to help your business recover in the event of a cyber-attack or system failure. Your plan should be treated as a living document that adapts and grows alongside the ever-changing technological landscape.
Regularly revisiting and updating this plan ensures that you stay ahead of potential pitfalls, and pivot in response to any emerging trends or threats.Â
Planning also allows you to assess risk.
Within the plan that you have in place, you can take the time to identify potential vulnerabilities. Once these vulnerabilities have been identified, you can then create strategies with your IT provider to improve or mitigate those vulnerabilities. With a plan, you embrace preventive measures instead of reactionary ones, which is what smart businesses are doing today.
Partner With an IT Professional
You’ll need an IT professional to help you avoid any IT crisis that may come your way.
Sure, you can try and do this yourself, but why would you want to? You won’t have the necessary resources to combat the potential threats lurking online and in the cyber world. Even if you did, it would take away the time needed to operate your business. With an IT professional that’s monitoring and keeping your network safe, you’re now in a proactive space, which is where you want your business to be.
Partnering with an IT professional is not just about tackling immediate tech issues and fixing computer problems, although those are some of the main benefits. It’s a strategic move to safeguard your business’s future.
By establishing a collaborative relationship with an experienced IT expert, you’re investing in proactive measures that’ll address any potential vulnerabilities, as I mentioned earlier. An IT professional acts as a radar for potential threats facing your organization.
Having this in place brings us back to the point I made at this section’s start. That is, you get to focus more on your core business activities instead of worrying about system failures or cyber threats. Another bonus that most businesses don’t consider is that IT professionals bring fresh, often overlooked insights. They can analyze your unique business and infrastructure and suggest upgrades that align with what’s happening in your industry.
This would be an advantage to your business because it’ll ensure you remain competitive without being in constant “firefighting mode”.
Being Proactive
You simply must become a company that is proactive if you want to prevent a future IT crisis.
My motto is always “prevention is better than cure”, and I’ve mentioned this in many other articles I’ve written. Becoming a business that is proactive as it relates to securing your computers, network, and overall company IT infrastructure, definitely contributes to the prevention is better than cure mindset.
Being proactive is one of the secret weapons in preventing a future IT crisis. Instead of waiting for problems to surface, you’re being forward-thinking, and instilling a culture of anticipation and preparation.
Here’s what I mean, picture your IT infrastructure (i.e. your network, computers, servers, routers, etc.) as a thriving garden. By doing regular maintenance and monitoring, you’re providing the necessary nourishments to help things grow and develop organically, while at the same time, preventing weeds from taking over.
It’s kind of the same concept with IT services and support. I know, IT and gardening are so different and have little in common. But you get the point.
A Disaster Recovery Plan
Even with a robust proactive plan, mistakes can and will happen. In such a case, you need to be prepared to take action quickly to mitigate the damage. Many organizations affected by the Crowdstrike outage had to pause business because they had no action plan for disasters like this.
So if plan A doesn’t work for whatever reason on a particular day, have a plan B in place so you can pivot as fast as possible and carry on with business.
Don’t wait until you’re hit with a crisis to take action.
Ensure your business is prepared by partnering with an experienced IT team. We offer a FREE, no-obligation Network Assessment to evaluate your current systems, identify potential vulnerabilities, and develop a “plan” to safeguard your business against future outages or other threats. Your company’s security and continuity depend on it.
You can contact us here or call our office at 571-498-8208 to book your free assessment.Â