Why Your Business Should be Using NTP Clocks
Did you know? The smallest unit of time measurement in use is called “Planck time.” It’s the amount of time needed for a light beam to travel Planck’s length: roughly 3.3 x 10 to the -44 power of one second.
If you’ve done a little research on NTP clocks and time servers, you may be wondering: What’s the big deal? Why does everyone seem to be raving about NTP clocks, anyway?
It’s because highly accurate timekeeping can safeguard your computer network and improve your business’s efficiency dramatically. To learn more about why NTP clocks and timekeeping are such a big deal, keep reading.
Scheduled Data Backups
Routine data backups are essential to any business’s safety or efficiency. However, if you have digital systems that aren’t running on the same synchronized time, your systems may fail to back up correctly — if they manage to back anything up at all. As a result, you could expose your system to hackers and risk losing critical data.
Installing an NTP time server will keep all of your digital systems on the exact same time, thus dramatically diminishing the chances that a scheduled backup will be missed.
Maintaining Network Accelerators
Network accelerators, and devices similar to them, employ cashing systems that can rely on file time stamps to determine which content version is most current. Unmanaged time synchronization can cause these devices to stop working, which may lead to incorrect file versions being used.
A reliable NTP clock and time server can eliminate this problem altogether, so you wouldn’t have to worry about incorrect data usage ever again.
Maintaining Network Management Systems
Anytime an error occurs somewhere across your computer network, it’s necessary to use the information stored in system logs to diagnose the problem. However, if the timing for the system logs isn’t lined up with your time synchronization, the diagnostic process can take much longer. This can result in significant delays before you get your system up and running again.
Security Breach Analysis
If your business experiences a network security breach, figuring out how your network was compromised and what data was infiltrated may only be possible with the right time synchronization. Without accurate, time-stamped server and router logs, diagnosing and correcting the issue could be impossible.
Another problem with inaccurate time data is that it leaves your systems vulnerable to prolonged attacks from hackers. Instead of hurrying to make as much damage as they can while they have access to your system, they could be greeted with much more time than should be possible to wreak havoc on your servers and systems.
With the correct NTP clock server, you wouldn’t have to worry about being unable to track security breaches ever again.
Compliance Regulations
Not only is accurate timekeeping and synchronization important for efficient business practices: in some parts of the world, it’s the law. Certain industry sectors, such as emergency and financial services in the United Kingdom, are required to keep an accurate time record of data. In the near future, this regulation could become the norm across all industry sectors, around the world.
Maintaining Trading Systems
In some industry sectors, organizations could possibly engage in hundreds or thousands of electronic transactions, throughout every second of the day. The stock exchange is just one significant example where NTP clock systems are essential for keeping business moving.
To get the improved security and efficiency your business needs, make sure you invest in the best NTP clock servers for you.