Norland cites human error as major risk

Norland Managed Services, a leading provider of engineering services to data centres and other critical environments, has warned that without a comprehensive risk management approach to their data centre facilities, organisations face the risk of costly failures and significant harm to their reputation. Norland’s new white paper “Critical systems: You are the weakest link” acknowledges human error as the biggest cause of data centre failure and sets out a 10 step process to mitigate risk.

Tuesday, 15th October 2013 Posted 11 years ago in by Phil Alsop

Norland argue that a robust approach to managing risk backed up with an appropriate set of behaviours and values is fundamental to protecting organisational profitability and integrity.

Its own approach called CERM™ or ‘Critical Environment Risk Management’ maintains and monitors the critical systems of a business such as its data centre as well as other essential mechanical, electrical and technological systems.

With CERM™ critical systems are:-
· maintained and monitored in accordance with a documented maintenance programme
· personnel recognise that human factors are responsible for the majority of outages
· effective and tested procedures are in place for operating critical engineering systems and for managing unexpected events
· there is full visibility of the risks and any potential threat to business continuity
· continuous learning takes place through constant feedback.

Mark Acton, Critical Product Director, Norland said: “The Uptime Institute and others have shown quite clearly that the vast majority of service-affecting incidents in critical environments ultimately stem from human failure. CERM™, and its online portal CERMView™, have been developed by Norland to precisely target this area in order to deliver a framework of reliable and risk-free services which are vital to maintaining service continuity in business critical environments.”