The potential threats of prioritising IT business as usual
It’s no secret that mid-sized organisations are finding their IT teams over-stretched. Resources are too thin on the ground with, at times, skeleton teams being responsible for all areas of IT delivery across high volumes of users. There is next to no scope for the infrastructure optimisation and strategic thinking that business leaders increasingly demand, especially as up to 90% of the team’s time is being spent ‘keeping the lights on’. Yet businesses cannot function in the absence of IT, and in a large number of cases, there will be compliance or regulatory ramifications should a data breach occur.
Businesses cannot afford to focus only on Business as Usual (BAU) with cyber security threats rising daily. Without in-house expertise on security, data backup and recovery, or the time to keep existing skills and expertise current, IT teams find themselves trapped in a high-risk catch-22. Steve Hollingsworth, Director, Covenco and Gurdip Sohal, Sales Director, Covenco discuss the importance behind having a trusted IT partner with dedicated expertise in key areas such as infrastructure, backup and security to the existing IT team, for safeguarding and supporting organisations.
Unreachable Goals
It remains incredibly challenging for organisations to prioritise IT activity and investment. As IT teams find themselves being pulled from pillar to post merely to preserve necessary services, an urgent need remains to make crucial upgrades to both strategy and infrastructure. It’s nothing new for IT teams to face cyber security threats: they’re continually rising, generating new risks. The business objectives goals and IT reliance are evolving, requiring increased resilience, more availability and a powerful and robust data recovery approach strategy. The business objectives goals and IT reliance are continuously evolving, requiring increased resilience, more availability and a powerful and robust data recovery approach strategy. Not to mention, sustainability must be considered when attempting to achieve any changes: 87% of business leaders expect to increase their investment in sustainability over the next two years to support organisation-wide Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) goals, according to a recent Gartner survey.
So how are IT Operations expected to meet these necessary targets while also managing databases, responding to network glitches and, of course, addressing the extra demands generated by Working from Home (WFH)? Particularly when both resources and skills are so scarce. Despite some predictions that the continued shortage of IT staff may subside by the end of 2023, that doesn’t ease current pressures today.
Companies simply do not have the time to upskill or reskill existing staff right now. In fact, many businesses are struggling to retain valuable employees who are being tempted to jump ship by ever rising salaries. Yet understaffed and over stretched IT teams produce a very significant business risk: the most recent fine imposed by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), for example, saw companies being warned of complacency and not taking the necessary steps of training employees and upgrading software.
Varying Needs
According to Gartner, something has to give if resources remain so stretched, with four out of five CEOs increasing digital technology investments in an attempt to combat current economic pressures, including inflation, supply constraints, and scarce talent. And, the risk of a cyber security breach will be pointed to instantly by most IT professionals. A limited number of companies now expect to avoid a data breach. For 83% of businesses, it’s a case of when, not if a data breach will happen. These companies also anticipate more than one breach to occur, according to the 2022 IBM Data Breach survey.
When detecting, responding to, and recovering from threats, the faster approach is proven to be superior. The business cost remains lower the quicker the resolution. Yet what percentage of IT teams have the resources readily available to create relevant data backup and recovery strategies or maintain confidence in the latest security postures?
Different demands are placed on IT teams as a result of these issues. While the majority of businesses will require full time monitoring against cyber threats, in contrast implementing and then upkeeping data backup and recovery policies are not skills that are necessary 24/7. Therefore, an annual or bi-annual review and upgrade is all that is necessary for most organisations. Having a trusted partner capable of providing end-to-end services across infrastructure, backup, managed services, and security – and flexing up and down in line with business needs – is becoming a key IT Operations resource.
Outsourced Expertise
A partner with specialised technical knowledge can improve existing skills in such specialist sectors. They spend every day evaluating the latest solutions and technologies, understand business needs and have the ability to achieve a best practice deployment rapidly and, significantly, correct first time.
An expert can confidently and quickly make time to understand the entire IT landscape and assess the backup and recovery needs, for example, without the Business-as-Usual distractions a member of the IT team faces. How long will it take to get back up and running in the event of an attack or server failure? What is the company’s Recovery Point Objective (RPO) or Recovery Time Objective (RTO)? How does the business plan to deal with a cyber-attack? What are the priority systems?
A partner is able to de-risk the operation by focusing entirely on identifying where risks may lie and then introducing the necessary solutions quickly and constructively. The process is accomplished while enabling the IT team to focus on their existing and demanding jobs, whether it is instant database copies using IBM FlashSystem or VEEAM backup vault in the cloud, with a disaster recovery plan that utilises high availability or relocation to achieve a local recovery within minutes. All of this can be done while allowing the IT team to focus on their existing and demanding tasks.
Conclusion
Whether a business needs to thoroughly improve cyber security or broaden its infrastructure to facilitate the CEO’s digital agenda, or both, hardly any IT teams have either the dedicated expertise or spare capacity to deliver. Of course, focusing on Business as Usual remains crucial – but unfortunately it is just not robust enough in a continuously changing technology environment.
Therefore, it is key to partner with a trusted provider that holds the ability to provide a flexible end-to-end service with dedicated expertise as and when required to support and supplement the overstretched IT team. Not only to keep the lights on, but also to ensure the organisations’ current and future necessities are effectively addressed.
