Inside the IT Graveyard: 5 IT Failures We See Every Week (And How to Escape Them)

Every week, we walk into organizations where the same five failures quietly undermine performance. These failures aren’t rare accidents – they’re predictable, preventable, and costly. Gartner estimates the average cost of IT downtime at $5,600 per minute, and the average cost of a serious compliance failure is now in the tens of millions per incident (IBM/Ponemon). For executives, that translates to valuation hits, compliance scrutiny, stalled initiatives, and frustrated customers.

The good news? These failures can be eliminated. Let’s step inside the IT graveyard and look at the five most common issues we uncover- and, more importantly, how to escape them.

Failure #1: Set-and-Forget Infrastructure

The Problem: Too many organizations treat their core network and server infrastructure like appliances – install them and forget about them. This neglect creates a prime target for cyberattacks like ransomware and data breaches, on top of being a leading cause of unplanned downtime. We see servers running on outdated software, firewalls with obsolete rules, and switches on the verge of failure.

Business Impact: For executives, this isn’t a technical hiccup – it’s a direct hit to the bottom line. Unplanned downtime halts revenue and productivity, while a security incident from an unpatched system leads to millions in recovery costs, regulatory fines, and irreparable brand damage.

The Protected Harbor Difference: We don’t just monitor your systems; we own the stack. Our engineers proactively manage and maintain the infrastructure, applying patches, predicting failures before they happen, and providing free upgrades to keep your technology current. We treat your infrastructure with the same obsessive care we give our own.

“The most expensive words in IT are, ‘I didn’t know it could do that.’ Our job is to ensure you know exactly what your technology is capable of – and, more importantly, what it’s about to fail at – so we can prevent disruption before it costs you.” —Nick Solimando, CTO, Protected Harbor

Failure #2: Compliance Checklist Mentality

The Problem: Many organizations view compliance (like HIPAA, PCI, SOC 2, or GDPR) as a box-ticking exercise – a burdensome audit to pass once a year. However, simply noting a vulnerability to an auditor is not the same as resolving it. Checking a box ≠ security. This creates a fragile environment where security is a façade, and the moment an auditor isn’t looking, vulnerabilities creep in, leaving sensitive data exposed. It’s critical to note that regulatory fines can double or triple if violations are knowingly ignored.

Business Impact: A compliance failure is a business failure. The financial penalties are severe, but the reputational damage from a data breach can be fatal, especially in trust-based industries like Legal and Healthcare.

The average cost of a data breach in the healthcare sector is now over $10.9 million per incident when accounting for fines, legal fees, and brand remediation. (Source: IBM/Ponemon)

The Protected Harbor Difference: Our compliance-first engineering approach embeds regulatory requirements into the DNA of your environment. As a SOC 2, Type II certified organization ourselves – a rare and high-value trust marker – we transform compliance from a reactive, costly liability into a proactive, marketable asset that demonstrates your commitment to security and trust.

Failure #3: The Single Point of Failure (SPOF)

The Problem: We consistently find entire operations hinging on one critical component: a single internet circuit, one aging server hosting a key application, or a lone individual who holds all the “tribal knowledge.” When that one point fails, the entire business stops.

Business Impact: This isn’t merely a technical disruption – it’s complete operational paralysis with immediate financial consequences. One failure means direct revenue loss, halted productivity, and frustrated customers. The financial impact is quantifiable and severe.

According to Gartner, the average cost of IT downtime is $5,600 per minute. That translates to over $300,000 per hour in lost productivity, revenue, and recovery efforts.

The Protected Harbor Approach: We architect for resilience. By designing redundant systems – from internet paths with SD-WAN to failover servers – and proactively cross-training our staff to eliminate tribal knowledge risk, we eliminate SPOFs. We ensure that when (not if) a component fails, your business doesn’t.

Failure #4: Frankenstein Network

The Problem: Over the years, technology has been added in pieces – a new solution for accounting, a different tool for marketing, a patchwork of cloud apps. The result is a complex, poorly documented, and insecure “Frankenstein’s monster” of a network. No one fully understands how it all connects, making support, security, and scaling a nightmare.

Business Impact: Soaring IT support costs, increased security vulnerabilities, and inability to adapt to new opportunities. It creates technical debt that cripples innovation and drains resources.

The Protected Harbor Difference: We believe in solving the root issue. We start by diagramming your entire network and bridging internal teams to uncover what’s truly in use and how it connects. Then we create a strategic, unified technology roadmap to simplify and standardize your stack, giving you control and clarity.

“Our partnership with Protected Harbor transformed our IT from a constant source of anxiety into a strategic asset. They saw the root causes we’d been missing for years.” -A Protected Harbor Client.

Failure #5: The Vendor Blame Game

The Problem: When you have multiple vendors for internet, phones, software, and hardware, outages become a finger-pointing contest. Your team is stuck in the middle, playing referee while the business suffers. The problem doesn’t get solved; the blame just gets passed around.

Business Impact: Extended resolution times during crises, immense frustration for your staff, and a lack of accountability for the outcomes you’re paying for.

The Protected Harbor Difference: We build long-term, mutually beneficial partnerships – a rarity in our industry. Our partnership model provides unlimited support and single-point accountability. As your primary technology partner, we own vendor relationships and troubleshooting.

Crucially, our contracts include a commitment to proactively reduce issues, not just reactively resolve them, ensuring your business enjoys stable, predictable technology operations.

Case Study Highlight: Proactive Outage and IT Failure Prevention

This is one example of how Protected Harbor transformed a client’s IT from a liability into a strategic asset – a result achievable across any industry.

A multi-location healthcare client was suffering from frequent network outages that disrupted patient care. A typical MSP would have just rebooted the equipment each time. Protected Harbor implemented our 7-Step Outage Prevention Framework.

We diagnosed a root cause that previous providers missed: a complex interplay of bandwidth saturation and a misconfigured router. By solving this and building a redundant, monitored architecture, we transformed their network from a critical liability into a strategic asset for reliable care.

Results:

• 99% Uptime achieved
• 40% reduction in common IT errors and tickets
• Established a Comprehensive Asset Inventory

Conclusion

Avoiding IT failures isn’t enough. The real opportunity lies in eliminating hidden liabilities and turning technology into a driver of growth, resilience, and enterprise value.

That’s what our Strategic IT Liability Assessment delivers:

• A comprehensive visibility audit of your IT environment
• A security gap analysis that pinpoints blind spots
• A compliance readiness review (HIPAA, PCI, SOC 2, or the standards that matter most to your business)
• A customized roadmap to resilient, growth-ready infrastructure

We build long-term, mutually beneficial partnerships – including unlimited support – to ensure your IT is not just stable, but a strategic advantage.

Turn today’s IT risks into tomorrow’s strategic advantage.

Human IT Errors: What the Heck Do They Mean?

Human error is an inevitable part of any complex system, especially one as vast as IT. IT relies on humans to perform even the most minor tasks which unfortunately can lead to both minor and major mistakes under stress or pressure. Even just the slightest mistake can affect an entire organization and its users.

This post will explore what human error is, provide examples of human errors within IT systems, and the best practices to prevent them.

What is Human Error in IT?

A human error typically refers to an issue that was brought on by a human end-user rather than by computer technology or software. The abbreviation PEBKAC (Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair) is occasionally used to designate a problem brought on by human mistakes.

Because humans are creatures of habit and occasionally choose to get around security protocols rather than adapt, human errors remain a problem.

Another cause is that people frequently feel both rushed and overworked, which can result in sloppiness, particularly while scrolling through emails. Most individuals by now have probably received some form of training when it comes to recognizing phishing emails. Still, sometimes the simplest of steps are frequently skipped because verifying links and manually typing known, trustworthy domains into browser windows takes time.

Fact check: According to IDG’s 2021 Security Priorities Study, employees falling prey to phishing or other non-malicious security policy violations were to blame for 44% of security incidents in 2021, up from 36% the year before. This was the case even though approximately 50% of respondents gave priority to personnel security awareness and training.

In terms of cybersecurity, the average human error costs roughly $133 per record. And it can take businesses 242 days to find and fix a problem caused by such unintentional actions.

5 of the Most Common Types of Human Error in the Workplace

Neglecting Safety

Employees tend to disregard even the most basic safety precautions overtime because they’ve grown either so accustomed to their jobs or they’ve garnered a lack appreciation. Workplace accidents that could have otherwise been entirely avoidable often originate from neglecting implemented safety protocols.

“Messing Around”

Workplace camaraderie can help to increase morale, but when it turns into horseplay, it can be hazardous. Physical and verbal horseplay can be dangerous, resulting in accidental equipment and product damage, co-worker conflicts, and even personal injuries. Aside from physical damage, standard protocols could potentially become slighted if an employee becomes distracted by another co-worker. This could lead to an employee accidentally skipping over a very important safety measure.

Fatigue

Employees are far more likely to have a workplace mishap when they are too exhausted to safely perform their fundamental job duties. Tired employees can disregard the basic safety precautions, nod off at work, or even click onto a link they otherwise meant to disregard. If this happens frequently, it could warrant a human error investigation.

Fast working

An individual who works quickly to finish a task or meet a deadline may intentionally omit essential details. A hasty worker may fail to stop and look over a potentially hazardous email or IT protocol.

Poor Training

Sometimes an employer can be liable for a workplace incident since human error is not just limited to employees. Workplace mishaps can be guaranteed when a manager rushes through employee training or omits crucial training matter.

How to Prevent Human Error in IT?

The most excellent approach for companies that want to protect their sensitive data is to take the proper steps in preventing employee error. It is not acceptable to maintain your cybersecurity policy in its current form only because there was no immediate harm to your company.

Utilizing a sophisticated, comprehensive approach for minimizing insider threats and boosting your cybersecurity is the only method to limiting human error. You can successfully safeguard your business against employee security mishaps by using the following practices and solutions:

Update the Corporate Security Policy:

Your security policy should detail how sensitive information should be handled including; who has access to it plus what security and monitoring tools should be used. Review your security policies and ensure the document adheres to all current best practices.

Educate Your Staff:

Inform your staff of the potential dangers and explain the potentially costly and dangerous results of any blunders. It would help if you informed your team of the security concerns that these mistakes entail. Ensure that everyone is aware of and willing to abide by the business security policy.

Apply the Least Privilege Principle:

By denying all access, you may secure data access quickly and effectively. Privileged access should only be granted when absolutely necessary. You can avoid accidental data breaches and data deletions caused by employees who aren’t allowed to deal with sensitive data in the first place if users can only access the data they need for their jobs.

Keep an Eye on Your Staff: To identify suspicious activity and protect your system from hacker attacks and data leaks, you need to use a user activity monitoring software. Staff monitoring software like Protected Harbor is the most dependable solution to guarantee precise identification and avoidance of security mistakes.

Final Words:

Don’t Blame the Humans!

This article shows that human error is only natural. It’s impossible to eradicate completely, but there are ways to minimize it. To do this, employ the right people for your open positions, create a culture where mistakes are encouraged but must be learned from, and create a streamlined environment. With these factors in place, you can significantly reduce the number of errors made within your IT department and across your organization.

The strategy we employ at Protected Harbor challenges you to reconsider the way you see human risk. Untrained end-users may be your organization’s weakest security link. Still, with the correct tools and training, you can make them your first line of defence against any attack or breach, protecting your company in the long run.

Effective security awareness training can lower human error. Find out how Protected Harbor helps businesses promote secure behavior with engaging, intelligently automated cyber security awareness training. Contact us today!