The hidden challenges of Internet Resilience: Key insights from 2024 report

Our inaugural Internet Resilience Report 2024 uncovered that businesses cannot afford to treat resilience as an IT issue alone.

The result of responses from over 300 digital business leaders in North America and EMEA across technology platform providers, financial services, retail, and other industries, our research showed that almost half the surveyed organizations are losing upward of $1M monthly in terms of total economic impact (TEI) due to outages and service degradations. Read our previous post to learn about the headline takeaways from the report. In this post, we dive into additional findings from the report, which underscore how deeply embedded resilience needs to be across every aspect of modern digital business operations.

Key findings

#1 - Resilience is an ongoing effort, not a one-time fix

As our research shows, Internet resilience is far from a quick fix—it’s an ongoing challenge that requires continuous monitoring and improvement. Despite its importance, customers and the Internet were identified as the least resilient components in business operations. This creates a paradox, as these are also the two most critical elements for ensuring ongoing success.

Ramping up the pressure on IT teams is the increased dependence on third parties (more on them later). These services are typically beyond the control of internal IT teams, making constant monitoring and fast response times essential for resilience. As we highlighted, the longer Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) drags on, the higher the risk of payouts, lost trust, and overall customer dissatisfaction.  

#2 -Third-party dependencies can make or break your resilience efforts

With 77% of respondents saying their third-party providers are extremely or highly critical to their resilience success, these dependencies—from cloud platforms to DNS services—can make or break your resilience strategy. However, traditional tools like Application Performance Monitoring (APM) don’t provide enough insight into where the issues lie.

The key, as the report highlights, is to treat observability not just as a tool but as a capability that offers full visibility into how external services impact customer experiences. As Adrian Bridgwater aptly puts it, “While we talk about observability platforms for the cloud, there is a defined requirement to assess the web itself as an integral part of the application supply chain if we want to shore up our digital journeys.”

The report outlines three best practices for monitoring third-party dependencies:

1. Incorporate your third-party dependencies into your Internet Resilience playbooks and runbooks.
2. Create rules of engagement that include your CDNs, managed DNS, backbone ISPs, and other third-party vendors.
3. Share the information gleaned through IPM as soon as you have it to jointly resolve the problem as fast as possible.

#3 - Resilience comes at a cost, but the price of failure is much higher

Our report revealed that cost is often the biggest obstacle to implementing Internet Resilience programs, with 51% of respondents citing it as their primary challenge. However, when it comes to the cost of resilience, it’s a matter of paying now to prevent outages or paying much more later when an outage happens.

Clearly, the challenges to achieving Internet Resilience are varied and complex and surmounting this array of roadblocks is daunting. That’s why the report encourages: “Don’t monitor your internal and external networks just to collect data. Instead, monitor what matters. Start from the outside-in by understanding the global impact of all the components within the Internet Stack from your user’s perspective.”

Talent continues to be an issue

Another significant finding is that 40% of respondents reported that talent or skill acquisition is a major barrier to successful Internet Resilience program implementation. This aligns with our findings in the 2023 SRE Report, where talent-related challenges—such as hiring, retention, and assimilation—were identified as the top obstacle to achieving reliability, surpassing other concerns like architectural complexity and tool sprawl.

Consider how this challenge intensifies during peak shopping periods like Black Friday, a time when web traffic surges to levels that standard resource allocation struggles to accommodate. These surges can lead to issues such as unresponsive checkouts, abandoned carts, and slow-loading pages—at times when any disruption can significantly impact revenue.

That’s where Catchpoint’s Internet Resilience Program steps in.

Catchpoint’s Internet Resilience Program

Our Internet Resilience Program is designed to help businesses address the exact challenges highlighted in our report, such as product launches, peak shopping periods, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and more. Here’s how it works:  

1. Catchpoint’s IPM Platform and Dedicated Performance Team: Two weeks before and following key events, you’ll have access to Catchpoint’s leading IPM platform, coupled with the expertise of a dedicated performance team. This team works closely with you to configure optimal testing strategies tailored specifically for your needs in preparation for your high-traffic period.
2. Real-Time Issue Detection and Resolution: During the program, our expert teams continuously monitor your applications and websites 24/7. They promptly identify, report, troubleshoot, and resolve potential issues to safeguard your customers’ experience and your business.
3. Comprehensive Post-Event Analysis: Following the event, we provide you with a comprehensive report that analyzes monitoring data, benchmarks against key competitors, and offers recommendations for performance optimization.  

“Building on more than a decade of experience working with the leading brands, the Internet Resilience Program packages best-in-class teams and technology,” said Hussain Peeran, Senior Vice President, Customer Experience and Technical Services at Catchpoint. “Every year, we safeguard mission-critical systems for premier enterprises, on average averting over a dozen potentially disastrous incidents. Without our rigorous preventive monitoring, these threats could inflict severe business impact often measured in millions of dollars.”  

To learn more about the Internet Resilience Report and ensuring Internet Resilience with Catchpoint:

• Download the full report
• Explore the Internet Resilience Program
• For tips on how to prepare your website for times of high traffic, download our ebook‍