Can your IT contracts handle the heat?

When systems fail, this can quickly become a matter of financial and operational catastrophe and, in extreme cases, public safety.

Following the recent heat wave, several NHS trusts in England declared critical incidents after IT servers overheated and server cooling system failed. Disruption can be further exacerbated by increasingly complex environments, where a failure in one provider can have a cascading impact.

Extreme weather appears to be less of a freak occurrence and is fast becoming par for the course; however, the underlying issue is broader.

Unexpected major IT incidents can occur due to a host of issues including cyber incidents and cloud outages, and difficult questions need to be asked by clients as to whether services are sufficiently robust to ‘weather the storm’ and what to do if and when critical systems fail.

With further high temperatures predicted for the UK and Europe in the next couple of weeks, being prepared for the challenges these pose to critical digital infrastructure is essential to prevent any loss of service – or worse.

What you need to do

Ahead of any significant forecast of extreme weather, it is important for firms to consider the following:

Firstly, review existing contracts. Risk profiles will change over time in response to evolving technology and conditions. This means regular contract reviews should be undertaken to consider whether business continuity plans reflect current threats, that service level and relief mechanisms are appropriate, and for teams to understand what to do if services become unavailable.

Consider the value of force majeure clauses which may be in place. Traditionally, these are drafted with specific events such as natural disasters, wars or government action in mind. However, firms at risk may wish to use the opportunity to identify whether these clauses can also include technology disruption or - if not - specifically allocate responsibility to scenarios to mitigate any potential issues in future.

Risk should be managed collaboratively, meaning customers and suppliers should have appropriate processes for notification of incidents, corrective action plans and continuous improvement. If these are not in place yet, it is prudent to begin planning and discussions around how best to allocate risk now.

Finally, it is vital to assess your existing dependencies and disaster resilience. Operational dependencies such as data centres, cloud providers and networks should be identified to assess contingency plans and alternative sourcing arrangements in the event of outages.

With Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic and Denmark all having recorded record temperatures in June, and with some weather forecasts warning conditions in the UK could again reach the mid-30s in early July, beginning preparations now could help keep the temperature down on costs and infrastructure challenges before it is too late.