Ensuring infrastructure resilience in an online world
Server outages at global ISPs may be an extreme case, but they illustrate the challenge faced by businesses that are shifting a growing proportion of their information and transaction infrastructure online – often to cloud based computing. The growth in cloud computing is one example of the trend towards ever greater reliance on the Internet. Moving to the cloud and making use of virtualised servers makes sense financially, but organisations need to be aware of the inherent risks, and ensure they are prepared for infrastructure failure when it comes.
ISF’s Threat Horizon 2012 report highlighted infrastructure failure as one of its top 10 threat scenarios. The report highlights how companies have come to rely on Internet only sales channels and mechanisms, to the extent that most people only have one way to perform their day-to-day transactions. Poor Internet resilience, especially at pinch points in the network, results in frequent and sustained regional Internet outages and prolonged loss of service. The threats to business come from loss or damage to communications links or services – often as a result of under-investment in infrastructure – and from malfunctioning equipment, associated with a lack of resilience.







