How to recover from an IoT outage

No one wants to suffer an IoT outage, but with cyberattacks at the root of many disruptions unfortunately it’s a case of when not if they will happen. Power cuts and mechanical failures can play their part too. You must do everything you can to reduce the risks of downtime (find out how) but you must also prepare to deal with outages swiftly and effectively when they do occur. Read on for our 8-point IoT device checklist for rapid recovery capabilities and strong data protection during outages.

Top 3 takeaways on recovering from an IoT outage

1. Power cuts and mechanical failures can cause IoT outages, as can cyberattacks and as they are at the root of many disruptions unfortunately it’s a case of when, not if, an outage will happen
2. You must do everything you can to reduce outage risks but also prepare to deal with them swiftly and effectively when they occur
3. Eight measures, that include shutting down non-critical functions, buffering data locally and falling back to alternative networks, help your IoT device recover gracefully from an outage.
   

Fail to plan, plan to fail

Failing to plan is absolutely planning to fail when it comes to IoT network resilience and uptime. An outage will have much greater consequences if you don’t have a recovery strategy when you design your solution.

Cost is the obvious one, because outages are expensive. According to one report, 90% of companies incur over $300,000 of costs every hour of a computing/network outage. When cyberattacks target IoT in manufacturing, the average financial impact is more than £224,500.

Downtime disrupts operations and can have a catastrophic reputational, as well as financial, cost. It can expose weaknesses that could prompt regulatory investigation with the potential for fines and additional negative publicity. We have plenty of advice on maximising resilience to minimise downtime – recap our blogs on IoT devices and high availability - but planning doesn’t end there.

You must also have measures in place to recover well when an outage occurs.

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8 steps to recover from an IoT outage

IoT devices must be designed to protect themselves during an outage and initiate a graceful recovery. Include these eight measures to help your devices ensure data integrity, minimise power consumption and restore connection without overloading the network.

Firstly, you need your device to detect the outage and distinguish between temporary fluctuating coverage that could be down to a change in location or something else, and an actual outage event. To do this, it must monitor its connection status continuously. It should be programmed to wait a defined period of time before identifying an outage and to retry the connection a set number of times.

2. Shutdown of non-critical functions
Outage identified, the device should then buffer unsent data locally and suspend non-essential functions while maintaining critical functions such as data monitoring and storage.

3. Switch to low-power mode
The device should switch to low-power mode to reduce power consumption and ‘wake up’ periodically to attempt reconnection.

4. Connection attempt retries
After each failed reconnection attempt, the device should increase the time before its next attempt to reduce drain on the batteries and load on the network. It should monitor signal strength for favourable conditions because reconnection attempts under poor signal can consume excessive power.

5. Alternative networks fallback
Local multi-network and multi-IMSI SIM cards support automatic switching to connect to an alternative network in the event of an outage on the primary network. This makes your IoT device highly flexible and your solution far more resilient than it would be with a regular SIM with only one network. During the solution design phase, you will need to define how the device switches between networks and the conditions for returning to the primary network.

6. Device management/cloud/application alerts
Before a loss of connection, the device should notify other links in the data chain, such as the cloud platform, if it can. That way, they can take their own measures, for example by marking the device as offline or changing data processing logic.

7. Automatic recovery and re-synchronisation
After the network is restored, the device has clean-up work to do. It should automatically re-establish connection, upload buffered data and synchronise its clock and status with the server so that all data timestamps and system states are aligned.

8. Error handling fallback
The device should be equipped to take additional action in the event of a prolonged outage. It should be able to switch to a backup communication method, if available, maintain environmental controls and generate alerts for user intervention.

Avoid a bungled IoT outage recovery – get the right advice

How well, or not, you recover from an IoT outage is predetermined by the measures you put in place at the design stage. IoT outages can damage your company’s reputation and revenues, and they are inconvenient - possibly devastating - for your customers. Do everything you can to minimise the risk of outages but also prepare for how you handle them when they happen. Wireless Logic can help you design your IoT for maximum resilience, chat to our experts and download the free guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

If I maximise resilience, why do I need to plan IoT outage recovery?

IoT downtime disrupts operations and can have a catastrophic reputational, as well as financial, cost to your business. It can expose weaknesses that could prompt regulatory investigation with the potential for fines and additional negative publicity. Power cuts and mechanical failures can cause outages, as can cyberattacks and as they are at the root of many disruptions unfortunately it’s a case of when, not if, an outage will happen. You must do everything you can to reduce the outage risks but also prepare to deal with them swiftly and effectively when they occur.

How do I recover from an IoT outage?

You can design your IoT device to protect itself during an outage and to initiate a graceful recovery. Eight measures that include shutting down non-critical functions, buffering data locally and falling back to alternative networks help your device ensure data integrity, minimise power consumption and restore connection without overloading the network.

How can I reduce the risk of IoT outages?

You can’t eliminate the risks of IoT outages completely, but you can do a lot to reduce them and minimise downtime should the worst happen. This guide to maximising uptime for IoT explains how in detail. It walks you through a combination of strategies to maximise reliability, security and efficiency including backup power sources, advanced network and SIM capabilities and comprehensive cybersecurity measures.