A recent Uptime Institute report reveals that 80% of IT outages result from human error, often linked to tribal knowledge, undocumented processes and hidden dependencies. In hybrid IT environments, this reliance creates risks like prolonged outages, compliance issues, and security threats. Ofer Regev, CTO at Faddom, highlights six dangers of depending on informal, undocumented knowledge in IT operations.
A recent Uptime Institute report reveals that up to 80% of IT outages stem from human error, often due to staff either disregarding established procedures or working with unclear guidelines. One of the primary contributors to these failures is “tribal knowledge”—undocumented processes, hidden dependencies, and critical operational details known only to a select few within an organisation.
In complex hybrid IT environments, relying on tribal knowledge creates significant risks, leaving businesses vulnerable to prolonged outages, compliance gaps, and security threats. Ofer Regev, CTO and Head of Network Operations at Faddom, an IT mapping solution monitoring over a million applications, outlines six key dangers of depending on informal knowledge sharing.
Six key dangers of tribal knowledge in IT
Loss of critical knowledge when key personnel leave: When experienced engineers leave an organisation, they often take with them critical, undocumented knowledge about the infrastructure and application behaviour. This knowledge is essential for troubleshooting and maintaining systems, and its absence can leave the remaining team scrambling to fill the gaps during critical incidents.
Longer outage resolution times: Without proper real-time dependency mapping, IT teams waste valuable time trying to piece together the relationships between services and applications during an outage. This confusion prolongs downtime and exacerbates the impact of the incident. By the time the full picture is understood, the issue might have spiralled into something much larger.
Routine maintenance triggers unexpected failures: Inadequate knowledge of downstream dependencies can have dire consequences during routine maintenance tasks. For example, when patches are applied or systems are reconfigured without an understanding of the services reliant on them, cascading outages can occur unexpectedly, catching teams off guard and crippling operations.
Overlooking shadow IT: Shadow IT, the use of unapproved tools, unmanaged cloud assets, or department-owned projects, often operates outside of traditional IT management systems like Configuration Management Databases (CMDBs) or discovery tools. These systems often remain undetected, leaving the organisation vulnerable to risks and inefficiencies that are hard to track or control.
Obstacles to compliance efforts: With increasing regulatory demands, organisations are required to maintain up-to-date and verifiable documentation of their IT assets and processes. Tribal knowledge, by nature, cannot be audited, and static records are quickly outdated. This makes it difficult for companies to demonstrate compliance with regulatory frameworks and can expose them to penalties or reputational damage.
Increased security risks: Unmapped connections between systems can obscure vulnerable pathways, creating challenges when it comes to detecting lateral movement or assessing the full impact of a security breach. Without a clear understanding of how systems interact, detecting threats and mitigating risks becomes significantly more complicated, leaving organisations exposed to cyberattacks and other security incidents.
How to mitigate the risks: Application dependency mapping
One of the most effective ways to address the challenges posed by tribal knowledge is through application dependency mapping. This approach involves discovering and visualising the relationships between applications, servers, and services across hybrid environments. By automatically generating a real-time map of all dependencies, IT teams gain a comprehensive understanding of the entire system’s architecture. This helps eliminate guesswork and allows teams to quickly grasp the full context of any change, outage, or potential threat.
Himani Verma is a seasoned content writer and SEO expert, with experience in digital media. She has held various senior writing positions at enterprises like CloudTDMS (Synthetic Data Factory), Barrownz Group, and ATZA. Himani has also been Editorial Writer at Hindustan Time, a leading Indian English language news platform. She excels in content creation, proofreading, and editing, ensuring that every piece is polished and impactful. Her expertise in crafting SEO-friendly content for multiple verticals of businesses, including technology, healthcare, finance, sports, innovation, and more.
