Don’t panic, it’s just an IT failure!

Every day you are exposed to crashes that your server, hosting, website or online store may undergo. They affect both small and big players. Your online business is teetering on the edge every minute, and the losses as a result of a potential problem are greater the larger your business is. Do you know how to protect it from failing?

Be ready for problems. They will come eventually

As I mentioned in the introduction – failures and incidents affect everyone, without exception. And unavailability of services or digital products is a natural thing and happens very often. Contrary to the claims of advertising slogans, no IT system works non-stop.

And even if the problem doesn’t happen to your website or store directly, there is still some risk that your hosting or server room will crash. It only takes a small fire somewhere in Europe to destroy your entire server infrastructure and put you out of business for good. A perfect example of this is the OVH server room fire in Strasbourg that occurred in March 2021.

Almost every fifth IP address in the OVH cloud fell victim to the fire. The incident put online banking services, government agencies from Ivory Coast and France, and Senuto, among others, out of business.

It is worth noting that the previous major failure of OVH server room took place in 2017, i.e. 4 years ago. At that time, as a result of power failure in the data center in Strasbourg, the following websites fell, among others: jakdojade.pl, pkp.pl, virtualnemedia.pl or joemonster.org.

The nemesis of your hard-built business can also be… a pensioner who floods the server room below him. Exactly such an event took place at the end of 2019, when in Minsk Mazowiecki a pipe burst in the apartment of an elderly man, which flooded the entire server room of UPC The losses were estimated at 400 thousand zlotys.

As you can see, Black Swans in the IT industry are an everyday occurrence.

That’s why you should protect yourself against them, take care of your places in the network, keep a cool head no matter what, and pay attention to making backups.

Backup and move on

Backup is the ABSOLUTE BASIS for protecting both private and corporate data. Malicious people say that data is divided into those that are backed up and those that are invalid.

If you’re not backing up your store or website, know that you’re asking for trouble. All it takes is an act of fate (which, as I mentioned, happens unexpectedly often in this industry) to rob you of your money-making machine.

What to backup?

All the important stuff. Key data includes: data files with passwords, accounting documents, data from SaaS systems, system and application settings, or any company documentation.

Okay, but how often to do a backup?

Well, as often as it is required and cost effective.

For example: if you run an online store where 2 orders come in every day, the risk of losing data accumulated during the day is not chilling.

But if your store processes 5,000 orders a day, losing that data sounds worse than another term of an unpopular government.

So, you need to adjust the frequency of backups according to the specifics of your business. If you have thousands of actions on your store or website every day, backup should be done several times a day. Remember, however, that the more often you backup, the more you will pay for data transfer.

It is worth quoting here the 3-2-1 rule, according to which you should:

• have a minimum of 3 copies of the data,
• save them on 2 different media,
• 1 of the media should be in a separate location.

There is no cloud. There are only other people’s computers

You should back up even if you keep your data in the cloud. The cloud still relies on physical server rooms that like to burn or float.

Have you ever backed up data from your invoicing application or mailing program? What if the server that hosts those services also fell victim to a crash? Then in one fell swoop, a nasty twist of fate would cut off your access to all the services your business relied on.

Don’t panic and do a backup

Don’t wait passively for failures – those will come sooner rather than slower. Contracts are said to be for bad times. Same with backups and disaster recovery plans. Implement a proper security policy in your company and sleep soundly.