Determining acceptable downtime

Applies To: Forefront Client Security

You can measure the costs of replacing lost hardware easily. However, it is more difficult to assess the total cost of downtime that occurs when a server running Client Security experiences a failure. Excessive downtime can result in increased exposure to malware, which can lead to many business losses, including the loss of sales, loss of customer goodwill, loss of productivity, loss of competitiveness, missed contractual obligations, and increased costs resulting from the need to make up these losses. Therefore, you and your management team should agree in advance on what the acceptable amount of downtime is for a computer running Client Security in your organization. This agreement is called a service level agreement. After you establish a service level agreement, you can determine the Client Security deployment and server configurations that best meet the requirements for that agreement.