Ramutė Varnelytė, head of the IP resource management platform IPXO, cautions against this move. She argues that using spreadsheets to manage Internet Protocol (IP) allocations is not only unsecure – it’s dangerous. Spreadsheets are very popular with small and medium businesses. For tackling the myriad, nuanced needs of today’s IP landscape, these tools just aren’t cutting it. Even under optimal conditions, spreadsheets are neither scalable, real-time, nor provide needed audit trails to track changes, making them poor tools to manage today’s complex IP infrastructures.
A shocking 68% of small and medium businesses continue to rely on manual methods to keep track of their IP address allocations. This dependence on antiquated processes has resulted in many disasters that would have been prevented with an advanced toolkit. As Varnelytė points out, the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) provides a remarkable example. The embarrassing 2020 incident where the NHS lost over 16,000 test results was caused because they used an archaic “xls” format, which only has a limit of 65,536 rows. These kinds of accidents serve as examples of the dangers of spreadsheet overreliance.
The Pitfalls of Spreadsheets
The reality is that spreadsheets were never built to control or track anything as complex and sensitive as IP infrastructures. Varnelytė emphasizes that “spreadsheets lack scalability, have no real-time synchronization, no audit trail, and no built-in safeguards against conflicting updates or data leakage.” These drawbacks leave entities with tremendous dangers, such as the threat of human mistakes and information corruption.
Varnelytė wants to make clear that direct links between APIs and outages are rare. She points out that people remain the single most important factor in causing the network to go down. Misconfigurations, neglected patches and copy/paste errors spelled disaster. She points to the Facebook global outage in October 2021 as a textbook case. This avoidable incident demonstrates the human consequences of overreliance on outdated standards and tools.
Varnelytė added that it’s rare for anyone to own up to the fact that a spreadsheet brought down production. He noted that human error is almost always the number one contributing factor to network failures.
The Case for IPAM Tools
Next-gen IP Address Management (IPAM) tools offer a wide range of advantages. It’s not the case with spreadsheets, but with these tools, efficiency and security both take huge leaps forward. These tools offer you the ability to use them to manage learned external IPv4 and IPv6 assets. Welcome to a new level of freedom in our connected, mobile world! Varnelytė notes that IPAM tools can enable network discovery and provide centralized visibility across multiple data sources within a single dashboard.
To import assets alone into IPAM tools like these only takes 2–5 minutes, so you can quickly escape the cumbersome spreadsheet management. “Ignoring modernization because ‘it’s always worked’ is like refusing to install seatbelts because you’ve never crashed,” Varnelytė states. She emphasizes how cheap these tools are. For organizations looking to modernize their systems, it’s available as never before!
Moving Forward
Recognizing this truth Despite their historical usefulness, spreadsheets are becoming far too unwieldy and unsustainable as a means of managing IP infrastructure. Varnelytė goes so far as to claim that dependence on spreadsheets adds risks which organizations can no longer afford to overlook. “Spreadsheets may still have niche utility, but they’re not a sustainable or secure way to manage IP infrastructure,” she asserts.
Yet in today’s hyper-connected world, organizations need to embrace smarter, more innovative solutions to stay ahead of constantly changing threats. Moving to IPAM tools minimizes opportunities for human error. In addition, it increases operational efficiency by allowing for real-time data management.
