With another year coming to an end, now is the perfect time to plan for the future. Most businesses begin the year with the hope of growing and improving operations. Those operations and indeed those growth goals depend on technology. So, it makes sense to look to at optimising your IT at this time of year.
A year-end technology review provides an opportunity to review important aspects of IT use in your business. The goal being to take time to focus on improvements you can make to boost your bottom line. As well as the tactics that will reduce the risk of a costly cyberattack.
A recent study by Deloitte looked at digitally advanced small businesses. Those that make smart use of technology were found to be well ahead of their peers. Here are some of the ways they excel:
- Earn 2x more revenue per employee
- Experience year-over-year revenue growth nearly 4x as high
- Had an average employee growth rate over 6x as high
The bottom line is that companies that use technology well, do better. They are also more secure. According to IBM, businesses that have an incident response plan reduce the costs of a data breach by 61%. Using security AI and automation can lower costs by 70%.
This year-end, take some time to do a technology review with your IT team or managed IT provider. Doing so will set you up for success and security in the coming year.
Considerations When Reviewing Your Technology at Year-End
The goal of a year-end technology review is to look at all areas of your IT infrastructure. Security, efficiency, and bottom-line considerations will be the key drivers for future initiatives.
Technology Policies
When technology policies get outdated, people stop following them. Review all your policies to see if any need a refresh to reflect new conditions. For example, if you now have staff working from home, update your device use policy to reflect this.
When you update policies, let your employees know. It’s likely that at least some of them have forgotten important policy requirements since being employed by your business.
Disaster Recovery Planning
When was the last time your company did an incident response drill? Is there a list of steps for employees to follow in the case of natural disaster or cyberattack?
Take time to look at disaster recovery planning for the new year. You should also put dates in place for preparedness drills and training in the coming months.
IT Issues & Pain Points
It’s not ideal going through a big IT upgrade or migration without considering employee pain points. You could miss some golden opportunities to improve staff productivity and wellbeing.
Survey your employees on how they use technology. Ask questions about their favourite and least favourite apps. Ask what struggles they face day-to-day. Let them tell you how they feel technology could improve to make their jobs better. This valuable feedback benefits your business while helping to target the most improvements that will be most impactful.
Privileged Access & Orphaned Accounts
Undertake an audit of your privileged (ie “admin” level) accounts as part of your year-end review. Over time, permissions can be misappropriated leaving your network at a higher risk of a major attack.
You should ensure that only those that need them have admin-level permissions. The fewer privileged accounts you have in your business tools, the lower your risk. Privileged accounts with compromised passwords open the door to major damage from cyber attack.
While going through your accounts, also look for orphaned accounts. You need to disable or delete these (carefully!) because they’re no longer used. Leaving them active poses a security risk.
IT Upgrade & Transformation Plans for the New Year
If your business IT decision-making is “on the fly” it really can come back to bite you. It’s much better to plan out a strategy ahead of time, so you can upgrade in an organised way.
Have a vulnerability assessment performed. This gives you a list of potential problems your company should address. Eliminating vulnerabilities improves your cybersecurity. Planning ahead allows you to budget for your upgrades and avoid unplanned expenses.
Cloud Use & Shadow IT
Review your use of cloud applications. Are certain apps hardly used? Do you have redundancies in your cloud environment? A review can help you cut waste and save money.
Also, look for uses of shadow IT by employees. These are cloud applications that are being used for work but did not seek management approval prior to use. You may not even be aware they’re in your business. Remove this security risk by either closing the accounts or officially approving them and controlling their use.
Customer-Facing Technology
Don’t forget to look at the customer experience of your technology infrastructure. Go through your website and contact process as a customer would.
If you get frustrated by things like site navigation, then your customers and leads may be too. Include optimisations to your customer-facing technology in your new year plans. And when it comes to publicly accessible websites, don’t neglect their cybersecurity needs either.
Schedule a Technology & Security Assessment Today!
We can help you with a thorough review of your technology environment to give you a roadmap for tomorrow. Contact us today for a quick chat about your next review.
Article used with permission from The Technology Press.