Connectivity is the lifeblood of businesses in today’s digital-first world. However, digital connectivity goes far beyond having a broadband connection or an online presence.
There has been a clear shift to cloud-based services in the past 20 years that has rapidly accelerated post-Covid, and for businesses today, having resilient connectivity can ensure business continuity in the event of disruption.
Outside of the corporate enterprise, every facet of society has become reliant on connectivity. We consume our entertainment, communicate with our friends and colleagues, and store our photo albums directly via an internet connection. TV aerials and landline telephones are truly a thing of the past.
This digital infrastructure is now as important as the roads we drive our cars, and as such, businesses must ensure that their network infrastructure is resilient enough to cope.
Not all connections are equal
New technologies and exciting headline-grabbing download speeds offer the promise of a premium internet service for individuals and businesses alike. However, broadband connections in the UK, even including the latest generation of fibre technologies, lack any Service Level Agreements and these can be costly to businesses.
In fact, research from Hyperoptic found that UK businesses lose £12 billion each year due to internet outages. Faults are often remedied on a beast-endeavours basis with little to no priority given to businesses who have a critical need for connectivity.
The solution to this problem is to invest in a business grade ethernet service. These connections offer guaranteed connection speeds via dedicated fibre or wireless connections, with strict Service Level Agreements on service availability and fix times.
While business grade ethernet services offer inherently more resilience than typical broadband-based connectivity, they are essentially still singular points of failure.
Ethernet core network services may have >99.9 per cent availability, however this does not mitigate against issues that may occur between the core network and a user’s premises.
Construction and engineering work in the local area cutting through a cable, local power issues, or even natural disasters such as high winds or floods, these localised issues have the potential to have major impact on network services.
Maximum availability
True resilient connectivity takes all these considerations into account and uses technology to deliver geographically diverse connections: routing traffic via separate ethernet connections that each connect to entirely different network nodes to maximise their service availability.
With solid physical foundations in place, data availability and security must be reviewed and bolstered if necessary. Drops in connectivity can have a significant impact on a business’ operations, whereas adopting a robust cloud strategy will minimise any downtime by ensuring access to critical applications and data at all times. Additionally, a cloud infrastructure can facilitate remote working and most crucially, maintain data integrity.
The final step in ensuring resilient connectivity is to secure your network from physical threats. Cybersecurity is rightly a hot topic in the UK, with cyber-attacks surging. The government’s latest Cyber Security Breaches Survey found that 50 per cent of all UK-based businesses suffered a form of cyber security breach or attack in the last 12 months.
Cyberattacks are becoming more sophisticated with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, where an attempt is made to overload a network by flooding it with traffic, or zero-day exploits, which target unaddressed security flaws to obtain unauthorised access.
A strong cybersecurity posture involves physical protection in the form of firewalls, preventing unwanted access to a network and controlling user access. Latest generation network security appliances also include active inspection of all internet traffic to enable real-time monitoring and analysis.
This gives IT teams a holistic view of their network and allows for swift intervention in the event of suspicious activity.
Adapting to adversity
If businesses are to thrive in the modern world, then they must make their digital infrastructure a core pillar of their operations. In the same way a resilient individual can adapt well to adversity and challenges, if businesses ensure their connectivity infrastructure is strong and can adapt in periods of disruption, they will flourish.
With a continuous and reliable network underpinning their operations, businesses will be able to focus on what they do best and secure their long-term future.