Uptime monitoring: the questions we get asked most

Teams tend to reach for this after something has already gone wrong. The questions about uptime monitoring that come up most often on our calls.

The cheapest security work is the boring kind done on a schedule. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.

Do we need to care about this?

You should not learn about downtime from a customer. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.

Can it wait until after launch?

Occasionally. More often the post-launch version costs several times the pre-launch one. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions.

How do we know it is working?

Alerts nobody acts on are just noise. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.

How to tell if yours is fine

Security is a maintenance habit rather than a purchase, which is why it drifts. Three things worth confirming about uptime monitoring before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• You should not learn about downtime from a customer — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Pick the one that would hurt most if it failed, and start there.