Cal Wilson / June 21, 2021

No matter how excellent your provider is, things can always go wrong. If an accident, disaster, or cyber event compromises your internet infrastructure, and thus your ability to operate, make sure you have a plan in place.

Part two of Schooley Mitchell’s three part series.

Last week, we explored the internet crash that happened because of cloud company Fastly on June 8^th, 2021, impacting many big-name businesses. This week, in the second installment of Schooley Mitchell’s three-part series on internet outages, how they affect your business, and what you can do to minimize the damages, we look at disaster recovery plans.

What is a disaster recovery plan?

Simply put, a disaster recovery plan is a way to be proactive about the things that could go wrong, by describing the process, policies, and procedures for responding to them. This could be anything from a storm that causes a power outage, to a largescale cyber event. These plans lay out the necessary steps to recover or continue your IT infrastructure and should include hardware and software safeguards.

Why should you invest in one?

A disaster recovery plan can be the difference between your business’ ability to resume operations or not. Last week we discussed the disruption of an hour-long global outage, but not all events are so brief. A larger outage could eat into your revenue, reputation, and productivity. It could cost you customers and employees. Doing the work to mitigate these risks is an important part of business leadership.

Likewise, data loss can be devastating for your business operations. If you can coordinate protocols for offsite storage or backup schedules, you can soften the blow of a disastrous event.

So, what steps should you take?

If you don’t have any experience with disaster recovery plans, it can be beneficial to work with professionals who can offer impact analyses and identify potential risks.

However, there are also steps you can internally to help you prepare.

Take a thorough inventory.

Document your telecom operations details. This includes your computers, phone systems, servers, and storage. List the diagnostic tools used to monitor systems. Keep track of the software, cloud services, and web-hosting platforms you rely on to operate.

In other words, know what you need to function, and what alternatives can be employed, in the case of a system failure.

Identify the risks.

It’s important to know what has the potential to affect your organization’s operations. This can include natural disasters, industry-specific risks, or larger external cyber events.

Not everywhere needs to prepare for a flooding event but may have to instead prepare for winter storm damage. Likewise, some industries are going to have different risks than others. Institutions like universities may want to prepare for strain on computer systems during registration and exams periods, for example, while online retailers might experience overwhelming traffic during a sale. Knowing times when you are vulnerable to a potential crash will help you provide better support and backups.

Forbes also suggests mapping the trends impacting your business system. Have you thought more broadly about factors such as your reliance on other companies and hard-to-replicate specialist firms? What happens to your business if a cloud company you work with has an outage? After all, the June 8^th Fastly outage shows that a small glitch at a big provider can cause trouble for hundreds, if not thousands, of businesses.

Create a list of circumstances that will invoke your disaster recovery plan and rank their severity.

Spend time on events or conditions that are likely. It can be easy to overwhelm yourself with a list of potential catastrophes, but you want your plan to stick within the realm of probability, not fantasy.

Focus on telecom.

Our telecom systems do so much for our businesses, despite oftentimes being very fragile. One disruption can do a lot of damage. Part of your disaster plan should be focused on assessing your telecom situation.

Some questions you can ask in the case of damage to your telecom system:

• What cables are still intact?
• Can rerouting accomplish anything?
• Can critical segments be remapped?

As previously mentioned, working with a third-party professional to help assess this damage, and the risks to your systems, can go a long way in damage prevention and recovery.

Come up with recovery strategies.

Once you know the risks and what’s at stake, your plan should involve steps towards partial recovery. This could be an alternate site you could operate from during an event, or a scaled-back level of services to be prioritized.

Implement prevention strategies.

You can implement preventative measures to protect your equipment and avoid unnecessary loss. This could include data backups, fire containment doors, generators, or connecting your telephone system to an uninterruptible power supply that would maintain coverage for several hours in the event of an outage. This can also be as simple as strategically planning where tech is placed based on where your building’s sprinklers are located.

Security tech, like higher quality locks and motion sensors, can also be included in this plan.

Build company-wide compliance.

This is not just a senior leadership activity. Part of a disaster recovery plan’s success is in its adoption by each department within your organization. Middle management and employees should be reviewing policies and procedures and making suggestions when appropriate.

Parts of your plan can be delegated to trusted members of your team. Who is responsible for doing a regular inventory? Who is responsible for shutting off computers during a weather event?

Everyone should be on board to keep your operations running in the case of an accident or disaster.

Make preparedness a competitive advantage.

While this investment in preparedness may seem like a lot of extra work, it could potentially give you an advantage over your competitors.

Forbes says you can use disaster recovery to benefit your business, by being more reliable when events swamp other businesses. Maybe aspects of your plan are even the reason a new customer chooses you over a company with less risk mitigation implemented.

In essence, a disaster recovery plan is best business practice.

In conclusion…

Disasters happen. They’re not always avoidable, despite our best efforts. Whether it be a weather event, accident, theft, technical error, or large cyber event, there is a lot you can do in terms of damage prevention and risk mitigation to keep your company online and functional.

Next week.

In Schooley Mitchell’s three-part series on internet outages and your business, we have looked at what happens when the internet crashes, and how to set up a disaster recovery plan. Next week, we will take a look at your role as the employer when a remote or hybrid worker has an outage on their home network.

Related articles:

• What happens when the internet goes out?
• Merchants using P2P apps — protect yourself from online fraud.
• Should your business be paying for shipping insurance?

Cal Wilson / June 14, 2021

On June 8^th, 2021, several major websites from some of the world’s biggest companies went offline for about an hour. The outage, linked back to cloud company Fastly, has since shined a light on a critical weakness of global internet infrastructure.

A Three-part Blog Series by Schooley Mitchell.

In the first of Schooley Mitchell’s three-part series on internet outages, how they affect your business, and what you can do to minimize the damages, we look at what happened on June 8^th, and what it shows us about our dependency on telecom services.

So, what happens when the internet goes out?

June 8^th, 2021.

For an hour on June 8^th, technical problems at cloud company Fastly, caused widespread outages around the globe. Major websites such as Amazon, Hulu, The New York Times, The Verge, and CNN, among others, went offline.  Several airports worldwide were also impacted. Social media sites such as Reddit, Pinterest, and Twitch also experienced outages.

Perhaps most concerningly, the government web pages for the United Kingdom were unavailable. Citizens were temporarily unable to book services or find information regarding COVID testing and vaccinations, as an example of the outage’s real-world consequences.

Fastly is a ten year-old San Francisco-based service provider that is very popular with larger companies, such as the aforementioned brands, for helping their websites load faster for consumer traffic by storing larger files like images and videos closer to their end users.

Fastly announced on its website at 09:58 UTC that it was investigating the problem and, an hour later, reported it had identified and applied a fix. At the time, it declined to say what the problem was, leading to much speculation.

Later, Fastly blamed the problem on a software bug that was triggered when a customer changed a setting, revealing how very fragile internet infrastructure can sometimes be.

Although the outage was brief, and the solution quick, the hour of global confusion and dysfunction has highlighted some of the weaknesses in the way businesses operate online.

Are we too vulnerable?

Before the outage, Fastly was not a household name. It’s strange to think one company could bring so many parts of the internet — economic, governmental, and social — to a sudden halt, without being a widely known name. With every aspect of life, from schooling to grocery shopping to even health care, moving online, a vulnerability like this is scary.

As more services move online, a handful of companies are responsible for the backbone infrastructure that keeps those services afloat. An outage like the one caused by Fastly does real-world harm — even if just for an hour.

“We’re seeing more and more being concentrated in fewer and fewer vendors,” Josh Chessman, information technology analyst at Gartner, told The Washington Post in an interview. “Everybody has this perception of the internet as this really robust thing, and it is, until it’s not.”

Essentially, a lack of diversity of ISPs and web-hosting companies is part of the reason behind our vulnerability to big outages like the one on June 8^th. This is a perfect example of the importance of competition in the telecom industry.

Can more competition be achieved?

While there is a pressing need for more diversity in our internet infrastructure, the industry is extremely tough to break into.

Services like the ones Fastly provides, for example, are nearly impossible for any new company to replicate. Its business model requires having physical data centers spread across several countries; Fastly has over 50.

More than just a telecom problem.

The caliber of the websites that were impacted by this outage prove that internet outages can happen to anyone.  No matter how good of a provider you are with, accidents and disasters are inevitable.

You might remember events like June 8^th in the past. In June 2019, Verizon accidentally routed a large amount of U.S traffic to a single provider in Pennsylvania, bringing down big sites like Amazon and Facebook for many consumers. In July 2020, engineers at Cloudflare made a similar mistake, pushing too much traffic to a single data center in Atlanta, which failed and crashed a swath of busy sites, including the video game League of Legends. In January of 2021, hundreds of thousands of people lost internet connection along the United States’ East coast, when a construction crew hit a Verizon cable in Brooklyn.

The takeaway here is not to despair of a technical issue or damaged cable, but rather to be aware of the risks to your business and make informed risk mitigation plans.

Next week.

Next week, part two of our series on internet outages, we will look at disaster recovery plans, and how implementing one is best practice for your business.

Related articles:

• Finding the right internet server for your business
• Internet in the Age of COVID — Is your service enough?
• New business owners — be prepared to tackle unexpected operating expenses

Cal Wilson / June 1, 2021

If the last year has seen your company shift to work from home, you might have found the need for a new or improved internet server to help your business thrive remotely. If your current provider isn’t doing the trick, or for whatever reason, you’re in need of new solutions, it’s essential to prioritize a server that will give you the best connectivity 24/7.    

What is a server?    

An internet or web server is a combination of software and, in some cases, hardware that helps with necessary parts of running your business online; such as maintaining your website, supporting your company email, and allowing for file transfer and storage. Server hardware is connected to the internet, and allows for the exchange of data between connected devices, while the software controls how hosted files are accessed. Servers are critical for preventing data loss; something that is otherwise inevitable due to human error and faulty tech.  

There is a big industry debate over on-premises servers versus cloud based solutions. An on-premise server is a physical, on-site server that a provider must maintain. A cloud-based server is a virtual server hosted through cloud computing.  

If you have a website, or use any kind of file share solutions with your employees, chances are that you’re paying for a server, whether that be on-premises or cloud solutions.    

What to consider when paying for an internet server?    

You want a functional host of solutions at a reasonable price. Depending what you’re using the server for, you might want to prioritize some aspects over others. If you’re trying to run a call center remotely, like many businesses are finding themselves doing right now, speed and reliable connectivity are going to be of utmost importance. Knowing what you need is the first important step.    

Location, location, location.    

If you choose a server with poor speed or connectivity, you risk losing existing customers, as well as the opportunity to attain new customers. It can also cause delay in work progress, and overall poor productivity for your staff.  

Connectivity and speed are often dependent on your location, as well as the location of the server itself, if the server is on-premises. When investigating a provider, do some research about the internet connectivity speed in its location of operation.    

Location is especially important when considering whether you want to use a cloud or on-premises solution. On-premises software is installed on your company’s devices and servers, whereas cloud software is hosted on the vendor’s server and accessed via a web browser. The connectivity in your area is going to determine whether or not a cloud solution is even realistic for you.    

Cloud or on-premises?  

There is no shortage of opinions on this question. The truth is either option might work for you, depending on what you need and your preferences.  

In the past few years, cloud has seen increasing popularity, and vendors are beginning to move away from on-premises solutions. Still, on-premises have their benefits. Here is a breakdown of some of the pros and cons of each option.    

The truth is either option might work for you, depending on what you need and your preferences.  

Advantages of cloud hosted solutions include:  

• Accessibility from anywhere in the world, on any device, with internet connectivity.  
• No upfront installation costs.  
• Predictable, regular payments to cover software licensing, support, daily back-ups, and any potential upgrades you might choose.    

• All the maintenance is taken care of by the cloud service provider, so you do not need to worry about it.    
• Highly secure.    
• Can be deployed quickly, over the internet, in a matter of hours or days.  
• Due to the flexibility of cloud solutions, they can easily scale to meet the changing needs of your business; for example, a period of growth in employees.    
• You will save on your utility bills, not having to power any hardware onsite.    

Advantages of on-premises solutions include:  

• Less reliant on your business’s internet quality than cloud solutions.    
• Despite a pricier upfront investment, on-premises solutions have a lower total cost of ownership over the course of the system’s life cycle.  
• Because you are paying for the hardware and software installation upfront, you have more control over the configuration, upgrades, and system changes.  

The choice is yours.    

The best solution for your business is going to be dependent on your location, size, budget, and other determinant factors. Explore your options, and find the right fit for your company.    

Cal Wilson / May 10, 2021

From working and studying at home to an increase in online shopping, we, as a global community, have never used the internet more. Unfortunately, this has exposed some serious weaknesses in the strength of our networks.  

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, internet inequity was a pressing issue in North America. Connection to high speed broadband internet has been tied to better health, education, and financial prosperity. In a global crisis where isolation is part of the solution, this is more relevant than ever.  

In the past year, some analytics report a 50 percent increase in internet usage, just in the United States. For many families with two adults working from home, the home internet that had been working fine before COVID-19 is no longer sufficient. Especially if they also have children doing virtual schooling, streaming content, or gaming. The strain of the past year to networks’ infrastructure has meant that providers are having to come up with new solutions.  

Before lockdowns, networks were accustomed to peak activity times, as well as down times, based on typical consumer habits. Your office or institution’s peak times would be the inverse. Offices and institutions, such as universities, can typically support these heavier peak times, because they pay for “enterprise grade” internet broadband service, which utilize higher quality cables and piping than your typical neighborhood.  

As The New York Times explained it in an article last year, “many offices and schools essentially have the equivalent of a big pipe to carry internet traffic, compared with a garden hose for most homes.” 

This has created an obvious difficulty for business owners with employees working from home, as well as for employees already struggling with pandemic-related stress.  

In the United States, big carriers like Verizon, Cox, and Charter, among others, have taken measures to meet the increase in demand over the past year. The carriers’ challenge was to make home internet fit the expectations of business services. From upgrading plans, forgiving overages, and promising to improve infrastructure, measures have been taken by all major carriers to adjust to the new reality.  

In Canada, the situation has been similar, impacting rural Canadians most severely. Those working or running businesses out of small towns found they were out of options when it came to trying to adjust virtually. One study done in collaboration with the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) and Maclean’s found that “estimates just 46 per cent of rural Canadians have access to internet that meets that minimum standard, compared to 80 per cent for the country as a whole” and “in each of Canada’s 417 municipalities with more than 9,000 people–including the biggest cities, like Toronto–many people live with web connections that aren’t sufficient to work or study from home.” 

This is not just a Canadian problem. In Wisconsin alone, there are roughly 411,000 households without access to broadband speeds.  

Across North America, the answer to the dilemma posed by work from home seems to be improved infrastructure. This infrastructure is already implemented in downtown cores of cities, where multiple people on one residential network can be working or studying simultaneously. Outside of these cores, the current infrastructure can often only support one heavy user.  

The problem has been, as always with connectivity inequity, is that carriers only profit off investing in better infrastructure when there are enough residents in the area to purchase the service. This creates a problem for residents and business owners with employees working from home alike. The pandemic has seen an increasing urgency in adopting internet connectivity into the realm of public infrastructure.