INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
With the coronavirus outbreak continuing to gather pace, many businesses around the world are having to provide remote access for all their
employees, sometimes for the first time
This is being done under pressure to tight time constraints
IT staff are no different.Mistakes and misconfigurations are inevitable and that will potentially give hackers opportunities to exploit
At the same time, with network under growing strain from increased traffic and surges in demand, the potential for outages to occur is also
increasing.In this and other crisis scenarios, from cyberattacks to winter storms and natural disasters, there is therefore a higher premium
than ever on secure remote access and network resilience - and business continuity is becoming even more vital.At the same time, if outages
do happen in such crises, businesses may find getting the network up and running even more complex
With travel restricted or impossible, sending engineers out to remote sites to address downtime issues and resolve network faults may risk
compromising their health and safety and therefore not be in any sense realistic.For every organisation operating today, keeping the
business up and running is likely to be a key concern and the need for network resilience has risen in line with this
When disruption occurs, companies need to be prepared
They need a plan that enables them to recover quickly
The current crisis may have focused minds within networking teams and senior leadership to carry out risk analysis and put measures in place
But what is clearly required is a new approach that goes beyond simply adding redundancy or even improving uptime to add a layer of
continuity today, network resilience is key
Network resilience is the ability to withstand and recover from a disruption of service
One way of measuring it is how quickly the business can get up and running again at normal capacity following an outage.True network
resilience is not just about providing resilience to a single piece of equipment whether that be a router or a core switch for example; in a
centre or edge site, map it and establish what is online and offline at any given time and importantly wherever in the world it is
located.That enables a system reboot to be quickly carried out remotely
the data centre or edge location because of lockdowns and everything has to be done from afar
We are already seeing interconnection providers starting to restrict access to sites with Equinix a case in point.Alternative arrangementsIf
the remote reboot does not work, of course, it might well be that an issue with a software update is the root of the problem
With the latest smart out-of-band devices this can be readily addressed, because an image of the core equipment and its configuration can be
retained, and the device rebuilt remotely without the need for sending somebody on site
In the event of an outage, it is therefore possible to deliver network resilience via failover to cellular, while the original fault is
being remotely addressed, enabling the business to keep running even while the primary network is down.Building in resiliency through the
OOB approach does cost money, of course, but it also pays for itself: certainly over the long-term and often also in just a one-off
instance, depending on the outage and associated costs
Indeed, given the current situation, the cost of network resilience is a small price to pay for business continuity
OOB supports easier provisioning of new remote sites to flex and grow the network as well as fast speed of response
It is about insurance, but also remediation and maintenance.Why prevention is better than cureIt is worth highlighting that time is critical
When network outages occur, the damage is cumulative so businesses need to pre-plan and ensure that they are putting in place network
resilience as a preventative rather than a reactive approach
Often today the issue is not fully considered upfront
Organisations often defer discussions around network resilience based on the optimistic hope that a network outage never happens to them
In fact, network resilience should be built into the network from the outset
It should be a tick box exercise but typically it is not
Organisations generally either think that their network is somewhat resilient through the in band path or they are not thinking about their
branches or remote sites as much as they should
business running in what is effectively an emergency but as referenced above it is likely to be much better to plan for resilience from the
into the heart of their approach from the outset.Alan Stewart-Brown is VP of EMEA at Opengear
