Conducting a technology audit for your business will help you determine if your business can stand the test of time. It tells you where improvements are needed. For sustained growth, it’s important to identify where you need to make upgrades to benefit your organization.
In many cases, your local IPS can serve as an excellent resource for assisting in performing a technology audit. I have counted on my Spectrum Internet plans for that! As you read further, it will explain how.
What Is Information Technology Audit?
As the name implies, an Information Technology audit examines your existing IT structure. This includes the systems, policies, and operations governing those policies. The goal is to discover whether the hardware, software, and operations in place can secure the valuable informational assets of the company. It also helps you determine the right tools to support growth.
Your business operations, security protocols, software support, data security, personnel training and IT structure will be evaluated. This would point out key flaws in your IT systems.
Tips To Conduct a Technology Audit
These tips will help your business conduct an audit. Let’s get started:
1. Define the Scope
First things first, you need to establish the scope of the audit. You need to know what you are looking for. You need to draw a boundary around your assets. This boundary must include every asset that requires protection.
Create a list of all the valuable assets for your business. That includes anything that would require time and money to recreate.
2. Update Your Business Telephone Service
A business telephone service is more than simply a way of talking to people. It’s actually a powerful way to bring flexibility in your business operations.
Once you move to the cloud, it will improve your resilience and portability. Data from the phone’s system would be easy to pull too. Upgrade to unified communications. Combine it with your hosted voice solution for bringing all the business communications in a single place. This will enable you to stay on top of your needs.
3. Upgrade Wi-Fi for Both Employees & Customers
Your network plays a significant role. It’s one key way to get the work done. That means you have to make sure the Wi-Fi is running smoothly and it’s up to date.
You need to get rid of all the old equipment. Hackers discover vulnerabilities that can make your company’s data accessible to anyone with skills to breach the security. Take time to update the firmware. Otherwise, you could be leaving your precious data susceptible to hackers.
But wait, it’s not just your employees who use Wi-Fi. Your customers could be using it too if you have public Wi-Fi. If not, then you should consider offering them free network as it makes them stick around a little longer. You must operate the public network with necessary precaution.
4. Switch to Cloud
When auditing technology, pay attention to moving your business to cloud. Your priority should be to move any data that’s important for maintaining the basic operations.
5. Increase Your Bandwidth
Take a moment to look at the speed of your Internet. You must make sure the bandwidth is enough to meet your current and future business needs. If you are going for some tech upgrades like using cloud-based services or public Wi-Fi, you might want to consider upgrading the bandwidth as well.
6. Create a Disaster Recovery Plan
Disaster is always uninvited. Often, small businesses don’t have a plan on how to deal with the worst-case scenario. They don’t have a recovery plan. It’s very hard to immune yourself to calamity. Don’t have a disaster recovery plan? Then create it. It’s always best to know what to do in the state of crisis and how to keep the core business operations secure.
If you have a disaster recovery plan already in place, evaluate it and consider upgrades. For instance, move critical business data to the cloud to make sure if anything’s lost, the core business operations still keep going on.
7. Install Security and Surveillance Tools
Threat detection is one of the most important security tools to invest in. It will help you in monitoring suspicious activities. If you don’t already have security and surveillance tools in place, consider getting some. Video surveillance would protect your business from burglary. It will also help keep the productivity of employees in check as people can’t disagree on what happened. Even to capture high-quality surveillance footage, you will need a fast and reliable Internet connection.
Get Start Today
Haven’t performed tech audit yet? It is high time you do. See where your business stands and what tech improvements you need to make.
Chances are you will need some major IT structure updates. You might also need to upgrade your package. For that, you can contact Spectrum Internet support. Have an IT staff at hand to take care of matters immediately.
