In today’s business environment, ensuring your IT infrastructure’s resilience against power and internet outages is more critical than ever. Even minor disruptions can lead to significant financial losses, data corruption, and security vulnerabilities. Hardening your IT infrastructure involves creating redundancy in both power and internet connectivity, alongside implementing comprehensive cloud services and system hardening techniques. This article will guide you through strategies for ensuring uninterrupted service and secure IT operations, including deploying multiple internet lines, backup generators, satellite internet, and cloud services.
1. The Importance of Redundancy in Internet Connectivity
Multiple Internet Lines
One of the most effective ways to ensure continuous internet connectivity is by utilizing multiple internet lines. This involves connecting to multiple Internet Service Providers (ISPs). If one connection goes down due to technical difficulties or network issues, the secondary connection can take over, ensuring minimal disruption to your services.
Multiple internet lines offer several advantages:
- Increased reliability: By diversifying the ISPs, your organization reduces its dependence on a single point of failure.
- Load balancing: With proper configuration, multiple internet lines can distribute internet traffic between the available connections, optimizing bandwidth usage.
- Business continuity: This ensures that critical services like email, phone service, customer service portals, and essential operations continue to function without interruption.
For businesses that operate in multiple locations or remote areas, it’s essential to consider multiple internet lines from different ISPs to maximize coverage and reliability.
Satellite Internet
Satellite internet should be a strong consideration as one of your ISPs. Multiple ISP vendors can still come into a facility on a single pathway such as a utility pole which creates a single point of failure. An example of this is a tree falling on the utility pole during a storm. Satellite internet further hardens your network by creating an additional pathway for the internet to enter a facility. In addition, satellite internet is particularly beneficial in remote or rural areas where fiber-optic or DSL infrastructure may be unreliable or non-existent.
Satellite internet can provide:
- Backup during major outages: In the event of a widespread regional outage affecting traditional ISPs, satellite internet remains unaffected.
- Additional pathway: Often times different carriers use the same pathway to your building creating a single point of failure.
- Global coverage: Satellites can offer connectivity where physical infrastructure doesn’t reach.
For example, services like Starlink have started to extend satellite internet coverage across regions that previously had limited or no connectivity options. According to the Guide: Extending Starlink Wifi Between Buildings, satellite internet is becoming an increasingly viable option for businesses.
2. The Role of Generators in Power Continuity
Backup Generators
Power outages can cripple operations, especially in businesses that rely heavily on continuous power, like data centers, hospitals, and financial institutions. Backup generators provide an immediate source of power when the primary grid goes down. Generators ensure that critical systems, such as servers, security systems, phones, endpoints and essential business operations, remain operational during outages.
Key advantages of backup generators include:
- Seamless power continuity: Most generators can automatically switch on when a power outage is detected, ensuring there’s little to no downtime.
- Scalability: Generators can be sized based on the building’s power requirements to ensure essential systems and even HVAC systems remain functional.
- Protection against natural disasters: During natural disasters like storms or hurricanes, backup generators play a critical role in preventing extended downtime.
A significant misconception about backup power sources, especially during an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) event, is that generators won’t work. However, according to Electromagnetic Pulses – Six Common Misconceptions, properly shielded generators can still function effectively during such events.
3. Statistics on Outages and Their Impact
Outages, both internet and power-related, have substantial economic and operational effects on businesses.
Frequency and Duration of Power Outages
On average, U.S. electricity customers experienced around five and a half hours of power interruptions in 2022. The frequency and duration of these outages can significantly impact businesses that rely on continuous power, especially in sectors like healthcare, manufacturing, and finance.
Economic Impact
Power and internet outages cost businesses both directly and indirectly. Downtime can result in lost productivity, delayed services, and even damage to equipment or systems. For many businesses, downtime costs can exceed $50,000 per hour, with more considerable losses for larger enterprises.
Impact on Vulnerable Communities
It is important to recognize that power outages disproportionately affect vulnerable communities. These communities often face longer recovery times, which exacerbates the economic divide.
4. Benefits of a Hardened IT Setup
Hardening your IT infrastructure provides several benefits that ensure business continuity and security, even in the face of outages.
Increased Reliability
By using redundant systems for both power and internet connectivity, businesses can operate even during prolonged outages. Multiple internet lines, satellite internet, and backup generators allow businesses to continue serving their customers without significant delays.
Enhanced Security
Continuous internet and power are vital for keeping security systems online. A loss of connectivity or power could disable alarms, video surveillance systems, and firewalls, leaving businesses exposed to both physical and digital threats.
Business Continuity
The most significant benefit of a hardened setup is business continuity. Minimizing downtime reduces the risk of financial losses, damage to reputation, and potential security breaches. Businesses with a strong resilience plan are more likely to recover quickly from outages.
5. Adding Services in the Cloud
Cloud services add another layer of resilience to your IT infrastructure. By hosting services in the cloud, businesses can reduce their dependence on local physical hardware, ensuring that critical data and applications are available even during localized outages.
Understand Cloud Service Models
Cloud services come in various forms, each with its own advantages:
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Provides virtualized computing resources over the internet. Examples include Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.
- Platform as a Service (PaaS): Offers hardware and software tools for application development.
- Software as a Service (SaaS): Delivers software applications over the internet, often on a subscription basis. Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 are examples.
Cloud services can enhance resilience by ensuring that data and critical systems remain accessible even during outages.
Plan Your Cloud Architecture
Designing a scalable and resilient cloud architecture allows you to distribute your IT resources across multiple cloud providers, ensuring availability and performance even if one service experiences issues.
Implement Security Measures
Security is paramount when adopting cloud services. Businesses must:
- Use Identity and Access Management (IAM): Controlling who can access what resources in the cloud.
- Encrypt data: Both at rest and in transit to safeguard sensitive information.
6. Ways to Harden Your IT Infrastructure
Hardening your IT infrastructure involves implementing best practices that enhance the security and resilience of your systems.
Server Hardening
Regularly updating and patching your servers, alongside disabling unnecessary services, can mitigate vulnerabilities. Strong password policies and multi-factor authentication (MFA) provide an additional layer of security.
Operating System Hardening
Use security configurations like CIS Benchmarks, enable firewalls, geo-blocking and use intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS). Removing default accounts and passwords further secures your operating systems.
Network Hardening
Network segmentation, secure remote access (VPNs), and network monitoring help protect your internal networks from external threats. Implementing logging systems can assist in detecting suspicious activity early. Manage Detection and Response software for endpoint is recommended and helps detect breaches and malicious software reducing the duration of an attack.
Application and Endpoint Hardening
Ensure that applications and endpoints are secure by regularly updating them, using secure coding practices, and employing endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools.
Conclusion
In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, hardening your IT infrastructure is no longer optional—it’s a necessity. By deploying multiple internet lines, backup generators, satellite internet, cloud services, and rigorous system hardening practices, businesses can significantly reduce downtime, enhance security, and ensure business continuity. Implementing these strategies not only mitigates the risk of financial loss but also builds a more resilient organization capable of weathering both minor disruptions and major outages. The time to invest in hardening your IT infrastructure is now, before disaster strikes.