The Metric That Makes Your IT Org Look Healthier Than It Is
CIO, Monday, October 26th, 2026
Availability, SLA attainment and patch compliance keep IT dashboards green while hiding real risk. Here are three metrics that can turn red.
Scott Smeester argues that monthly availability, service-level attainment and patch compliance give boards false comfort because averages dilute concentrated risk.
A 99.9 percent month can hide downtime during month-end close, recurring 20-minute fixes count as wins, and a 96 percent patched fleet may leave the most critical legacy systems exposed.
He recommends reporting disruption minutes to critical processes during defined windows, repeat incidents, and the age of the oldest unremediated critical vulnerability on exposed systems along with approved exceptions.
Red thresholds should be agreed in advance, and traditional percentages can stay on operations dashboards.