Doing a year-end technology infrastructure review is very important to find problems, save costs, and plan better for next year.
Many businesses skip this and face system failures or security risks later.
In this blog, you will learn how to do a proper year-end technology infrastructure review, what to check, and simple tips to keep your IT systems strong, safe, and ready for the future.
Considerations When Reviewing Your Technology at Year-End
The purpose of a year-end technology analysis is to evaluate all the various aspects of your outlay of IT resources. The next waves of initiatives will be driven by security, improvements in efficiency, and bottom-line considerations.
Technology Policies
Policies around technology can become old and stale and then people just stop following them. Come up with all your policies and see if any need updating for new conditions. If you now have staff working from home, for instance, ensure your device use policy captures this.
Notify your employees when you update policies. This provides them a own the important information. They might have forgotten some things since going through onboarding.
Disaster Recovery Planning
When did your organization last conduct an incident response drill? Do you have a checklist employees can follow when a natural disaster or cyberattack strikes?
Look at disaster recovery planning for the new year. You must also schedule dates for preparedness drills/training for the next few months.
IT Issues & Pain Points
Do not approach a large-scale IT upgrade without taking employee pain points into account. Otherwise, you could miss out on some golden opportunities to boost staff productivity and well-being.
Survey your employees about how they use technology. Ask what their most and least favourite apps are. Ask what struggles they face. Ask them how they think technology can be improved to do their jobs better. Which, in turn, is better for your business. It can also help you focus on the improvements that will have the biggest impact.
Privileged Access & Orphaned Accounts
As part of your year-end review, conduct an audit of your privileged accounts. Permissions can become appropriated over time. This puts your network at an increased risk of a major attack.”
Only those who need admin-level permissions should have them. The fewer privileged accounts you have in your business tools, the less risk you’re taking. Once compromised, privileged accounts password can lead to extensive damage.
As you review your accounts, also check for orphaned accounts. You’re going to have to close these because they’re outdated. Keeping them active creates a security vulnerability.
IT Upgrade & Transformation Plans for the New Year
Making IT upgrades and decisions in “the moment” may come back to haunt you. It’s probably best to come up with a strategy beforehand so that you can upgrade in an orderly fashion.
Get a vulnerability assessment done. It gives you a list of potential things to resolve for your company. Cutting out possibilities of vulnerabilities is what makes you cyber secure. Having a plan in place lets you prepare for new projects and not spend outside of your budget.
Cloud Use & Shadow IT
Audit your usage of cloud applications. Are certain apps hardly used? Have redundancies in cloud environment Doing a review can help you reduce waste and save money.
Additionally, identify instances of employee shadow IT. These are cloud apps in use for work, but that have not been approved. Management might not even realize they are an issue. Eliminate this security risk by confirming or closing the accounts.
Customer-Facing Technology
Make sure to also look at the customer experience of your technology infrastructure. Sift your website and contact process as if going through it as a customer.
If you get frustrated with closet navigation and site functions like the one above, then your customers and leads probably do, too. That’s why optimizations to your customer-facing technology deserve to be part of your new year plans.
Cybersecurity Audit and Risk Assessment
Year-end cybersecurity auditing is crucial to detect vulnerabilities, evaluate your security posture, and plan effectively for the new year to guard against possible cyberattacks.
Review access controls, monitor for suspicious activities, and ensure compliance with cybersecurity standards for their industries. Such a risk assessment can reveal flaws in data protection, unauthorized access and outdated security protocols.
Simply addressing these issues early helps to reduce the likelihood of such an attack and makes the organization more secure overall. In addition, exercising incident response testing and endpoint security reviews ensure critical systems stay protected from emerging threats.
Budget Planning for IT Investments in the New Year
Strategic IT budgeting is critical to preserving and enhancing technology infrastructure. Every organization needs to review current spending, determine what needs to be upgraded, and invest in increased resources to improve cybersecurity, including software licensing and replacement of systems hardware.
By utilizing cloud-based solutions, automation tools, and AI-driven security measures, businesses can effectively increase efficiency and reduce long-term costs in this manner.
Moreover, companies must also include the costs for employee training and managed IT solutions to enhance efficiency and improve security. Disabling past-due licenses helps ensure that businesses remain competitive by improving system reliability and limiting the financial risk associated with the provision of obsolete or insecure technologies.
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Featured Image Credit This Article has been Republished with Permission from The Technology Press.