If you’re experiencing these signs, you need to re-evaluate your business’s IT
Technology continues to reshape the business landscape. It fosters innovation, which has led to boosts in productivity and faster, more efficient business processes to keep up with rising customer demands. But when left unchecked, technology can also pose serious risks such as devastating data breaches and lost customer confidence from inadequate cybersecurity. That’s why it’s important to have a regular comprehensive and independent examination of your company’s IT. Here are some signs that it’s time to reassess your IT.
#1. Unplanned outages and downtime
Your business operations are highly dependent on your IT systems. When your systems are down, your business is also down. If your customers can’t access your services regularly, they might take their business elsewhere.
While a small amount of scheduled downtime is tolerable for regular maintenance, you need to worry about unexpected outages and downtime. Not only do they take time and energy away from core business functions, but they also cost businesses $5,600 per minute on average.
#2. Recurring IT issues
All technologies will eventually break, so it’s normal to expect IT issues to crop up. But if you’ve been facing the same issues over and over again, despite being told that they’ve been fixed, then this is definitely a red flag. This means that your IT staff are only able to provide temporary solutions and are unable to address the root of the problem.
Given the critical role of IT in business operations, your IT staff must be equipped to not only detect and solve problems, but also prevent the same issues from happening again.
If your company is constantly experiencing IT problems, then it’s surely driving up costs and impeding productivity.
#3. Reactive IT staff
Is your IT staff constantly putting out fires and responding to requests? If yes, then it means they are simply being reactive and essentially waiting for failure that leads to costly, unpredictable outages and downtime.
Your IT systems must be proactively managed to avoid small problems from escalating and prevent other problems from even occurring. For example, your IT staff should combat cyberattacks by using state-of-the-art technologies that constantly monitors your incoming and outgoing traffic. They must secure your network by installing firewalls and antivirus software, encrypting your data, protecting and auditing data access, creating strong passwords, and more.
#4. Cyberattacks
Have you been locked out of your computer with a ransomware message demanding payment? Are your systems being remotely controlled by an intruder? Is there an onslaught of suspicious emails that makes you think your email accounts have been compromised? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then your company has suffered a cyberattack.
A cyberattack is a clear indication that you badly need to revisit your IT systems. It can cause major damage to your business. Your high-ranking employees might be targeted for a whale phishing attack, which can fool them to divert funds to hackers’ accounts. Infiltrators may also pretend to be staff and release statements that put the company in a bad light or customers might cease doing business with you if their information gets stolen. There could even be legal consequences if your company is subject to data protection and privacy laws such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA).
#5. Unrecoverable data after an incident
Data is a business’s lifeblood. Your company will be in terrible danger if your information gets lost, stolen, or held for ransom. In fact, 94% of companies who suffer a catastrophic data loss do not survive — 43% never reopen and 51% close within two years.
Lost data is catastrophic in today’s digital world. Even if your company can recover its operations from data loss, it will make you liable to lawsuits from your clients and huge fines from regulatory bodies.
Your IT infrastructure must have consistent backups for recovering vital business data after it is hit by a data breach or power outage. Backups seamlessly restore operations, so you’ll need to take a hard look at your IT systems if you don’t have these in place.
A comprehensive technology assessment by Red Key Solutions will help you address these issues and provide you with a technology strategy and roadmap, so you can gain confidence that your business is on a solid technological foundation. Secure your business by partnering with our IT experts.