4 Strategies to Ensure Success in Mission-Critical IT Services

Enterprise mission-critical IT services are the backbone of business continuity—from real-time communication platforms to systems that keep supply chains running and customer data secure.

When these services falter, the cost isn’t just downtime—it’s lost revenue, damaged trust, and disrupted operations. That’s why proactive protective strategies aren’t optional; they’re essential. 

Here are four proven ways to harden your mission-critical IT infrastructure for resilience and reliability.

1. Identify Mission-Critical IT Systems and Services

Before you can improve your mission-critical IT services, you need to know what systems are absolutely necessary for your organization’s main operations. Common examples of mission-critical IT systems and services include: 

• Communication platforms 
• Cloud backup services 
• Financial systems 
• Firewalls 
• eDiscovery solutions 
• Compliance tracking systems 
• Monitoring systems 
• Email 
• CRM systems 
• ERP systems

Since some of these systems may or may not be critical for your particular organization’s operations, you’ll want to identify all of your IT systems before you determine if they’re mission-critical. As you determine whether an IT system or service is mission-critical, ask the following questions to determine its importance:

• Does your team use the system or service daily? What would happen if it wasn’t working?
• Would the system being down cause significant financial loss for your organization?
• What data can’t be lost under any circumstances? Do you have a backup system or cloud service to protect the essential data?
• How long can a system be down? Establishing Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) for systems is useful for determining whether they are mission-critical.
• Are any systems or data subject to industry compliance standards or other legal requirements? (Most compliance standards will have requirements for system monitoring, data retention, and data encryption.)

2. Create an IT Continuity Plan

Once you know what IT systems you absolutely have to protect to keep the business operational and in line with your acceptable level of risk, you’ll need to create an IT continuity plan. These plans outline what employees should do if an IT system or service fails, providing instructions about how to get the system working again with as few disruptions to your organization’s operations as possible. 

With your mission-critical systems and services identified, you’ll need to complete the following tasks to create your continuity plan:

• Set RTOs and RPOs: Determine each system’s RTO and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO). Due to their importance, mission-critical systems and data will likely have the shortest RPOs and RTOs.
• Perform a risk assessment: Assess your organization’s risk by identifying potential threats and evaluating each threat’s likelihood and probable impact. Next, use the likelihood and potential severity of the threat to help your team prioritize what threats to focus on.
• Create an inventory of your IT assets: Document all hardware, software, cloud services, network infrastructure, and dependencies. You should also include third-party services and vendors in your documentation. Having an inventory makes it far more likely that each asset is adequately protected and doesn’t get lost in the shuffle after a disruption.
• Determine your recovery strategies: Whether it’s data or systems, you’ll need to establish your backup and restoration procedures while also determining your organization’s failover mechanisms.
• Create a document with detailed procedures and established roles: When an IT disaster strikes, your IT team and other relevant staff members should have clear, specific procedures to follow while getting your systems back online. For instance, you should have detailed procedures for communication protocols, data restoration, incident detection and response, and system failover and recovery. During this time, you’ll also need to assign roles to team members so they know what they’re responsible for during a disaster.
• Test the plan: With your plan protected, you’ll want to test it by simulating an emergency and seeing how your team performs. This test should help you identify any gaps in your plan so you can address them prior to a real emergency.
• Review and update your plan regularly: Since cyber threats are constantly evolving and the IT systems your business relies on can change, it’s necessary to review and update your IT continuity plan regularly. Additionally, employees should be properly trained and always given the most up-to-date documentation on their responsibilities. 

3. Ensure Data Sharing and Communications Are Secure

An incident like a successful cyber attack can compromise communications, resulting in leaked messages and stolen data. Some attacks could also cause your communication platform to go down or your team to be locked out of their email accounts. Without the ability to communicate quickly, your team will likely struggle to implement their IT continuity plan in a timely manner, and there will be a much higher risk of mistakes.

Due to the potential for stolen data and inefficient communications, organizations can benefit from investing in a secure communication platform that enables out-of-band communication. With an out-of-band platform, you can separate your communications from the primary network and systems. In the event of a cyber-attack or disaster that affects your network, this platform will ensure your team can stay in constant communication and securely share data while your team enacts the organization’s continuity plan.

4. Use a Communication Platform With Robust Tool Integrations to Eliminate Context Switching

Along with relying on a platform with out-of-band communication, using a platform with robust tool integrations can be valuable. When your IT team can integrate mission-critical applications, tools, and systems into an out-of-band platform, context switching can become a thing of the past. Instead of having to switch between apps and potentially miss essential updates or messages from team members, your team can do all their work and communications on one platform. 

Eliminating context switching with integrations can also make your team more efficient in their daily work and during IT emergencies. When seconds matter, the last thing you want is your team switching across multiple apps while also paying attention to incoming messages on another platform. With all the tools and apps your team uses integrated into one platform, your team can remain focused on solving a problem instead of being spread thin across multiple disconnected apps, resulting in increased efficiency.

Mattermost: Helping IT Maintain Mission-Critical IT Services

As a self-hostable collaboration platform designed for mission-critical operations, Mattermost helps teams protect their mission-critical data, systems, and services before and after disruptions. 

Mattermost offers out-of-band incident response, extensive tool integrations, secure communication channels, and compliance with the strictest security, privacy, and compliance standards.

Learn more about how Mattermost can support your mission-critical IT systems today.