Survey: EU Comm’s Network Downtime Only 10 Hrs/year
The EU Agency ENISA (the European Network and Information Security Agency) recently reported its findings from a survey on communication network resilience. The survey revealed a better than expected network availability, with only 10 hours downtime a year in Europe. Availability is vital not only to business, but also to private consumers. Service providers showed a higher level of service than expected.
Concerned about downtime on your network? The ENISA survey showed that there are only 10 hours downtime a year and over 99.9% availability. The availability of networks, services and business continuity is of major concern for businesses and consumers across Europe. As the number of disruptions increases, network operators and service providers put measures in place to ensure the resilience of their public networks. However, today there are significant differences in the approaches deployed by network operators and service providers across Europe. The ENISA survey of network operators across the EU, polled by the end of 2008, was based on 54 responses. The survey found that operators take network resilience seriously:
- Top network threats are hardware, software and location incidents, but also personnel incidents were also significantly represented.
- Operators describe their network and risk management procedures as fairly mature.
- There is no significant variation by size of operator regarding business continuity procedures.
Some key conclusions:
- Some alternative operators, however, are not placing enough priority on resilience.
- Alternative operators vary widely and are often very small. As such, resilience recommendations may not apply if they do not operate infrastructure critical to public welfare.
- This ambiguity leads to difficulty for policymakers as they try to develop industry standards and recommendations for Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Such efforts should be optional, or limited to infrastructure critical to public welfare.
IDC recommends the production of guidelines for operators to improve the resilience and operations of their networks. The report was Commissioned by ENISA and executed by IDC. The survey represents a variety of size, services offered, etc., of telecoms operators distributed across 17 of the EU27.
The full survey addresses 1) threats to the networks, 2) organizational factors in managing resilience, 3) maturity of network management processes, 4) business continuity planning, 5) managing third-party dependencies, and 6) risk management.
To review the full report click here.
Tags: availability, downtime, network disaster recovery, network reliability, network security, Surveys
