How Can Your MSP Protect You During A Heat Wave?

A prolonged heat wave can be a problem for your organization. It’s important that your employees stay cool and well hydrated, and your facilities need to be protected as well. High heat and humidity can cause damage to sensitive equipment, and power outages have the potential to short out that same equipment and cause data loss.

While your building may have a top of the line dedicated HVAC system, if power is lost during a heat wave due to excessive strain, the resulting high heat and humidity can bring down your organization’s IT infrastructure just as quickly as a hacker or virus infestation.

If your organization is one of the many worldwide who are increasing outsourced IT spending to help protect against data loss and to improve your uptime, you should also engage your MSP (Managed Service Provider) to protect your facility’s environment as well.

Install an “environment firewall” for advanced detection

Every organization maintains a firewall to warn them of intrusion attempts on their network, and to help block malicious traffic. In many instances, that firewall is managed and maintained by either their in-house IT department or their MSP.

It makes sense to have a maintained firewall. After all, who wants to have their data stolen, defaced, or deleted by bad actors? Data security is paramount to uptime and being able to service your customers.

Your data is just as much at risk of being lost when a heat wave hits your region. HVAC units run overtime in order to keep your facility (and all the surrounding buildings and homes) cool. When power grids come under intense strain due to all of the extra HVAC cooling, blackouts can occur.

When your HVAC unit goes down due a power outage, or it fails due to over-use during a heat wave, your servers and network appliances may still run on UPS units or a backup generator. So they will still be generating intense heat, however the usual cooling provided by your HVAC (along with air moisture removal to prevent high humidity) won’t help regulate those temperatures. This will lead to hard drive crashes and premature equipment failure… and data loss.

If your MSP provides you with managed environment monitoring hardware and services, your organization can help prevent heat wave-related concerns by receiving immediate notification of rising temperatures, or power failures that can cause damage. Think of it as an “environment firewall” – much like the firewall that protects your network and data, an environment firewall can do the same by notifying you and your MSP of the unexpected factors that can cause damage to your network and data loss. After all, almost 30% of data loss is caused by environment factors. Doesn’t it make sense to proactively monitor those in addition to malicious traffic to prevent damage to your organization?

Work with your MSP to prevent heat wave damage

Odds are you’ve worked together with your MSP and your internal IT department to develop a business continuity plan that includes proactive monitoring. Given the increasing intensity of heat waves facing regions all over the globe, it’s important to consider environmental impact on your organization’s ability to remain up and running.

Heat waves aren’t the only environmental impact on your organization’s data and network either. Extreme weather such as storms and hurricanes bring flooding and water leak concerns, while on the other end of the spectrum blizzards and extreme cold also bring power outage worries. By working with your MSP to develop and install a managed proactive environment monitoring system, you’ll protect your organization against data loss resulting from the effects of a heat wave, or any other environmental concern for that matter.

Your MSP already helps protect you against an untold number of hazards that can cause data loss; adding environment monitoring in the face of increasing heat waves and extreme weather will add another layer of protection to help keep your organization up and running even when faced with the most extreme weather.

Don’t run the risk of a heat wave hurting your employees and your ability to stay up and running. Speak with your MSP today about protecting your network and data with proactive environment monitoring to help keep your facility, data center, and network safe from unwanted and expensive weather-related downtime. Don’t wait until it’s too late!