SKILLS SPOTLIGHT
THE IMPORTANCE OF
ADDRESSING PEOPLE RISK
CNet Training’s CEO Andrew Stevens discusses how
human risk is still one of the main causes of data
centre downtime and the challenges associated
with addressing and reducing people risk.
F
or many years now, the outage
figures attributed to human error
have remained static, costing
companies thousands per minute. This
lack of change proves that this significant
issue is not being addressed.
However, it’s not just a lack of skills and
experience that pose a threat to a data
centre facility, even those who have worked
in the industry for years and who you may
think is the ‘perfect employee’ can put
the organisation at risk. Understanding
employee’s behaviour and their knowledge
gaps are vital – how competent are they at
applying their knowledge on an on-going
basis within mission-critical environments
is the key to risk mitigation.
We all know that outages are costly for
an organisation; it’s not just the financial
impact, but also the detrimental effect
it can have on the brand reputation,
customer satisfaction and compliance.
There are a few major organisations that
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Issue 13
have recently experienced the costly and
brand reputation-damaging impact an
outage can cause.
A study from LogicMonitor* shows how
more than 51% of outages are avoidable,
and 53% of those interviewed admitted
they are concerned that outages could be
so severe that they could make headlines.
The industry needs to pay attention to
these statistics and get better at spotting
the knowledge gaps in their teams and
invest in their people to improve their
competence and work towards protecting
against future downtime.
Many data centre professionals have
progressed into their roles as technology
has evolved and they have fallen into the
sector. This means that they most likely
learnt on-the-job and some have adopted
the approach of ‘it’s worked this way for
years, so why do we need to change the
way we are doing things?’
Data suggests that continuing to do
the same things in the same way is
risky, particularly within mission-critical
environments. Liken it to passing your
driving test, when you first pass you are
tuned into the rules of the road.
Yet, after several years of driving, who
actually refreshes themselves by re-
reading the highway code?
Most people are guilty of not refreshing
their knowledge in this area. This scenario
in a data centre facility could have
potentially costly consequences.
In psychology, there are four stages of
competence, called the hierarchy of
competence, where the learning model
relates to the psychological states involved
in the process of progressing from
incompetence to competence in a skill.
Unconscious incompetent. This is the
most dangerous or risky. This individual
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