Technology infrastructure has become the nerve center of a business. It reaches throughout an organization, empowering everything from customer orders to internal messaging.
If that IT infrastructure isn’t properly maintained, then companies can suffer a myriad of consequences. These include costly cyberattacks, low productivity, and inefficiencies that cause them to pay more for cloud solutions than they should.
Just one lapse in IT security can result in a breach that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Two costly high-profile breaches that happened recently were the ransomware attacks on Colonial Pipeline and global meat producer JBS. Both companies paid millions in ransom to attackers and are facing many other costs from multi-day shutdowns.
If you want to ensure your business is optimized and running smoothly, then it’s important to conduct several routine business security and technology assessments. These act as alert indicators, long before there is any sign of trouble. This type of technology consideration can help you avoid things like tech inefficiency and major IT security incidents.
Here are the routine assessments that you should be having done regularly.
Cybersecurity Vulnerability Assessment
One of the most important assessments to have done is to detect cybersecurity vulnerabilities. A vulnerability assessment will look at your entire technology infrastructure and identify any network or system issues that could leave you vulnerable to a breach.
For example, this type of assessment could turn up a problem with your backup and recovery strategy that leaves you at risk in the case of a ransomware attack. It could also identify a problem with your wireless router, such as a lack of firmware updates being applied.
A cybersecurity vulnerability assessment will provide you with a roadmap of items you need to address to ensure your company is protected from online attacks and data protection issues.
Cloud Configuration Assessment
When a company signs up for a platform like Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, they often don’t fully understand all the account and security configurations. They may even just leave them at less secure defaults.
Misconfiguration of those settings by users is the #1 cause of cloud account breaches.
Many companies are doing much of their work in cloud tools, especially since the pandemic. A cloud configuration assessment is designed to review the security and automation settings in your cloud accounts to ensure your accounts are protected from account takeover and fully optimized for productivity.
Device/Endpoint Security Assessment
Mobile devices now make up about 60% of a company’s endpoints, and many companies have no idea which of those devices is connecting to business assets at any time.
Employees often use their own mobile devices for work, and companies need to put a method in place to control and track data and cloud account access by each device.
The device/endpoint security assessment will look specifically at device security. Are devices being properly backed up? Is software updated regularly? Is there a way to remotely revoke access to company data if a device is stolen?
These are some of the things that an assessment of endpoint security is going to look at.
Website Security Assessment
Most companies are using a content delivery platform like WordPress to ensure their site is responsive across any device (desktop, tablet, mobile). However, a big weakness of these platforms is that they require multiple plugins to function.
Those plugins all introduce potential vulnerabilities to your website as well as any data collected through your site, like form submissions or credit card details.
A website security assessment will review the security of your website. It looks for any security vulnerabilities, such as those that allow hackers to conduct brute force attacks that can instantly deplete memory and cause your website to go offline.
A full review of plugins, themes, and other back-end components will be done and recommendations made to ensure your site and web server aren’t vulnerable to being breached by hackers.
Cloud Optimization Assessment
As companies adopt cloud applications over the years, they can often be left with an inefficient cloud environment and cloud waste.
The Blissfully report on Annual SaaS Trends found that many companies were suffering from poor cloud infrastructure. Some of the findings were:
- Cloud spend was up 50%, but cloud waste nearly doubled.
- Companies are churning through 30% of their apps annually
- Duplicate app subscriptions have increased by 80%
A cloud optimization assessment looks at how your cloud tools are working together. It uncovers redundancies where you’re paying for more than one app that can do the same thing. It also can help you identify things like unused subscriptions that you’re paying for and incompatibilities in your cloud environment.
This assessment is designed to save you money and promote more efficient use of the cloud.
Schedule Your Routine Technology Assessments with Carl’s Computer Care
Don’t leave yourself at risk by staying in the dark about your security or cloud waste. Carl’s Computer Care can help your Louisiana business with several routine assessments to save you money and reduce your cyberattack risk.
Contact us today to schedule a consultation! Call 225-315-3498 or reach us online.