Why network resiliency is more critical than ever for business continuity

Ransomware. Hacktivists. Power outages. Natural disasters. Global conflicts. These factors all combine to illustrate that the threats to traditional data storage and recovery practices are increasing, and constant. 

More causes for concern, according to the Harvard Business Review, are that extreme weather events were up 42% in the U.S. from 2021 to 2022. At the same time, infrastructure and technology failures (including power outages) soared 807%. Finally, transportation accidents (aircraft, maritime, rail and road) increased 296%. All these factors can be disastrous for business continuity.

Expectations are higher than ever before when it comes to internet access and availability. Customers, employees and partners expect the services enabled by business networks to always be available, no matter what. Yet an internet disruption often leaves everyone in the dark.

Downtime has serious financial downside. “The cost of a network, website or service being down or unavailable can be probative. The average cost of downtime across all industries has historically been about $5,600 per minute, but recent studies have shown this cost has grown to about $9,000 per minute. For higher risk industries such as finance, government, healthcare, manufacturing, media, retail and transportation their average cost of downtime tends to be over $5 million per hour,“ explains Daniel Shepherd.

Regardless of the cause - be it cyberattacks, natural disasters or something else entirely - any company that uses any sort of connectivity solution needs to be prepared.

Protecting your organization against worst-case scenarios

In the pursuit of business continuity, technology leaders should ensure systems and data are secure, and regularly backed up. Further, they need to have a solution in place to quickly restore connectivity during a disruption. 

Businesses need to ensure their end users and customers can connect to the internet, clouds, or applications in any of a myriad of worst-case scenarios – which maintains continuity.

How long can the typical business function without internet connectivity? Denied access to cloud applications and data, downtime can impact employee productivity, your customers, and your reputation. With these risks in mind, savvy organizations put plans in place to maintain consistently available internet connectivity. One of the best ways tech leaders can achieve this is to diversify internet connections geographically and physically.

Network redundancy supports business continuity by providing an alternative route for data in transit, mitigating the effects of a point of failure anywhere along the critical data path. This continuity is enabled via redundant devices and equipment across your network infrastructure. Businesses that build this redundancy into their network infrastructure stay connected to the internet by automatically switching to a different device if one suddenly goes offline and becomes unavailable.

Failover or redundancy connectivity is a necessity

In disaster recovery, data backup and business continuity terms, “failover” is the capability to automatically switch over to a geographically diverse secondary site or the cloud when primary networks, applications or hardware become unavailable.

Forward-looking organizations have included wireless internet-based failover solutions to guard against the risk of network downtime. They consider it a failsafe, and a convenient way to backup data internally. These solutions connect a given location to the internet with a simple, diverse, and all-inclusive wireless access solution when experience and network quality are important. To insure this, an organization should seek solutions that employ a dual carrier approach and has the option to be fully managed by the technology partner. A dual carrier approach puts the right carrier into a location, which is especially important in a multiple site solution. In single sites, it allows the delivery of the right technology to a specific location, and ensures a strong signal leaving the premises, as well.

Wireless internet access solutions can keep an organization’s network operational when the unexpected happens, and the correct solutions will bring a quality experience.

Wireless internet provides internet connectivity delivered via a 4G/5G cellular network that is separate from the wireline/fiber network connection. These attributes are what make these solutions both geographically and physically diverse from an organization’s source of primary connectivity.

These solutions provide organizations peace of mind with resilient access to the internet, supporting stringent business continuity standards. Additionally, wireless internet solutions can be used for diverse alternative access, rapid or temporary deployment. 

How Spectrum Enterprise can help

Spectrum Enterprise Wireless Internet is an all-inclusive wireless internet service that includes equipment, installation and support. Our nationwide service allows you to easily access the internet from any business location. Wireless Internet provides you with the ability to stay connected whether you need to rapidly turn up internet service, implement temporary internet access, or deploy redundant internet connections. 

Our 4G and 5G Wireless Internet service enables you to easily connect your locations to the internet when you need quick or additional capacity with network diversity, especially when quality matters. Our dual carrier service is all-inclusive, with several plan options. We set it up for you, making it easier to operate and integrate with other internet or network services – there is nothing to own, configure, or maintain – and we always include 24/7/365 support.

Feel peace of mind that you can connect users, applications and locations to the internet with an all-in solution tailored to your network needs that streamlines complexity and simplifies your network operations. 

Connect to the internet with a wireless solution that keeps your organization running.