Title: 4.3 - Prevention and Protection
Course: Introduction to Mission Critical > Section: Introduction to Mission Critical

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Prevention and Protection

While it is impossible to prevent earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes, we can prevent some of the downtime that they can cause. The main goal in a mission critical environment is to create and maintain a resilient system. A resilient mission critical system is one that is able to absorb local failures in the short term, while rearranging its resources to maintain critical mission continuity, and learning from experience to improve its resistance to future problems.

People will always be a threat to MCO, it could range from unintentional employee data loss or corruption to industrial espionage, or even terrorist threats. Cybersecurity must be a priority in today’s business and industry. Cybersecurity can help prevent damage and loss from threats both foreign and domestic.

A company, with preparation and  planning, can put in place redundant backups that are set up to take over seamlessly when something goes down. Alternate power sources, redundant hardware, and emergency plans of action can be a real source for preventing loss.

The idea is to:
- prevent as much as possible (problems, damages, outages, etc.)
- plan for what can go wrong
- control what goes wrong
- mitigate the issue (prevent further risk or impact)
- and to recover from what goes wrong