Mission critical

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A mission critical factor of a system is any factor (component, equipment, personnel, process, procedure, software, etc.) that is essential to business operation or to an organization. Failure or disruption of mission critical factors will result in serious impact on business operations or upon an organization, and even can cause social turmoil and catastrophes.^[1]

Mission critical systems

A mission critical system is a system that is essential to the survival of a business or organization. When a mission critical system fails or is interrupted, business operations are significantly impacted. Mission essential equipment and mission critical application are also known as mission critical system.^[2] Examples of mission critical systems are: an online banking system, railway/aircraft operating and control systems, electric power systems, and many other computer systems that will adversely affect business and society when they fail.

A good example of a mission critical system is a navigational system for a spacecraft. The difference between mission critical and business critical lies in the major adverse impact and the very real possibilities of loss of life, serious injury and/or financial loss.^[3][4]

There are four different types of critical systems: mission critical, business critical, safety critical and security critical. The key difference between a safety critical system and mission critical system, is that safety critical system is a system that, if it fails, may result in serious environmental damage, injury, or loss of life, while mission critical system may result in failure in goal-directed activity.^[5] An example of a safety critical system is a chemical manufacturing plant control system. Mission critical system and business critical system are similar terms, but a business critical system fault can influence only a single company or an organization and can partially stop lifetime activity (hours or days). Security critical system may lead to loss of sensitive data through theft or accidental loss. All these four systems are generalized as critical system.^[6][5]

As a rule in crisis management, if a triage-type decision is made in which certain components must be eliminated or delayed, e.g. because of resource or personnel constraints, mission critical ones must not be among them.

Examples

Every business companies and organizations will have mission critical systems if they are functioning.^[7] A downed filtration system will cause the water filtration company to malfunction. In this case, the water filtration system is a mission critical system. If a gas system is downed, many restaurants and bakeries will have to shut down until the system functions well again. In this case, the gas system is a mission critical system. There are various other mission critical systems that, if they malfunction, will have serious impacts on other industries or organizations.

This section may be confusing or unclear to readers. In particular, These look like "safety-critical systems" not "mission-critical systems". Please help clarify the section. There might be a discussion about this on the talk page. (September 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Navigating system of an aircraft

The aircraft is highly dependent on the navigating system. Air navigation is accomplished with many methods.

If two-way radio communication malfunctions, the pilots have to follow the steps in the Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations (14 CFR) part 91. Pneumatic system failure, the associated loss of altitude, and various unfamiliar situations may cause stress and loss of situational awareness. In this case, pilot should use instruments such as navigators to seek more information about the situational data. In this case, the malfunction of the navigation system would be mission critical and would cause serious consequences.^[9][10][11]

Nuclear reactor safety system

The mission critical is a business's quintessence and if failed, will cause serious financial and reputational damages. Today, as the companies develop and world becomes more web-based community, the range of mission critical has extended. But the mission critical computing has been evolving since the pre-Web era (before 1995). In the entirely text-based pre-web internet, gopher was one of the ASCII-based end-user programs. The mission critical system was basically used in transactional applications during this era. A business process management software, ERP, and airline reservation systems were usually mission critical. These applications were run on dedicated system in the data center. There were limited number of end users and usually accessed via terminals and personal computers.^[14]

After the pre-Web era, the Web era (1995 - 2010) rose. The range of mission critical increased to include electronic devices and web applications. More users were able to use to the internet and electronic devices, so larger number of end users were able to access increased mission critical applications. Therefore, the customers are expecting limitless availability and stronger security in the devices they are using. The businesses also start to become more web-based and this correspondingly increases the criminal associated with the money and fraud. This increase in range of mission critical made the security to become stronger and increased the security industries. Between 1995 and 2010, number of web users globally increased from 16 million to 1.7 billion. This shows increase in global reliance on web system.^[15]

After the Web era,

The Transport Layer Security (TLS; formerly, Secure Socket Layers, SSL) refers to the standard security technology of networking protocol that controls and manages client and server authentication, and

Shutdown systems

Nuclear power plants need safety systems to avoid mission-critical failures. The worst possible consequence that can result is leakage of radioactive materials (

Real time and mission critical are often confused by many people but they are not the same concept.

Real time

Real time is responsiveness of a computer that makes the computer to continually update on external processes, and should process the procedure or information in a specified time, or could result in serious consequences.^[20] Video games are examples of real time since they are rendered by computer so rapidly, it is hard to notice the delay by the user. Each frame must be rendered in a short time to maintain the experience of interactivity. ^{[citation needed]} The speed of rendering graphics may vary according to the computer systems.^[21]

Types of real time systems

• Hard real-time system shouldn't miss the specified time or can result in serious consequences. It is non-negotiable in timing and it is "wrong answer" if the deadline is missed. The example of hard real time system is
  airbags for cars.^[22]
• Soft real-time system has more loose deadline. The system can handle the problems and functions normally even though the deadline is missed, but their functionality depends on fast-paced processes. An example for soft-real time can be typing, which, if delayed, people will get annoyed, but answer still is correct.[23]
• Non real-time system doesn't have certain or absolute deadlines. However, the throughput of the activity of performance can still be very essential.^[23]

Differences

Real time is a software that if specific time is not met, it fails, but mission critical is a system if failed, will result in catastrophic consequences. Although they go hand-in-hand, since real time can be mission critical, they are not the same concepts. These two are often confused by many people, but they are different concepts, but associated with each other.^[22][23]

Mission critical personnel and mission critical systems planning

Social survival

From the perspective of social function (i.e.: preserving society's life support structure, and overall structure intact), Mission critical aspects of social function would necessitate the provision of

Psychometrics enables the determination and characterisation of various psychological aspects of mission-critical personnel (e.g.: their IQ in the case of highly skilled work, such as nuclear physics, for example). Some jobs require physical standards (for instance, in the army), or physical dexterity (e.g.: surgeons). There exist methods and means of characterising the types of skills, qualities and other attributes that certain mission-critical job roles require, and these can be used as benchmarks for determining whether certain individuals are well suited to a particular mission-critical job role, or what assistance a less qualified (or even less capable) individual would need in performing a certain mission-critical job role which might be beyond their abilities (such measures might have to be taken in emergency situations).

See also

• Life-critical system
• Critical infrastructure protection
• Downtime

References