Halloween may be behind us, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some scary things creeping up on federal IT professionals and security managers as the year winds down.

Chief among these haunts is the dreaded specter of network downtime. It lurks in the background, ready to pounce at the most unexpected and inopportune moments. It brings with it the nightmare of slow application performance, lost productivity, and average hourly costs that can swell into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

You may be thinking, “If network configuration is months of boredom, then why should I read this?” The short answer is, “So you never have to experience those moments of extreme terror!” Today, we will be talking about why network configuration management is so difficult and what’s at stake. This article is a three-part series that will look at five best practices for improving your network configuration management.