Technology is an unavoidable component of most businesses these days, helping them achieve their goals and vision. However, without caution, technological flaws could allow cybercriminals to access your network and cause harm to your company.
Technology auditing is a key solution to this problem.
A technology audit can assist you in better understanding and identifying gaps in your organization’s security, compliance and backup postures. But if you don’t have a background in IT, the results of a technology audit can be confusing. You may be overwhelmed by the number of items that need to be refreshed or replaced, and you may not know where to start.
Don’t try to eat the elephant all on your own! Having a trusted managed service provider (MSP) by your side can help you avoid these stumbling blocks. An MSP can provide you with a prioritized list of the most urgent to least urgent gaps, allowing you to decide how to proceed and allocate funds.
Here are some reasons why prioritizing technology gaps is critical.
Allows you to identify and fix your most critical gaps immediately.
Following an audit, you may discover hundreds of vulnerabilities, prompting the question, “Should all of these be fixed at once?”
To make an improvement on a major highway, you wouldn’t close every lane at the same time. Instead, you would first block and repair the most damaged one during non-peak hours. The same is true for vulnerabilities, and it is always better to bridge the most critical one first.
Bridging all the gaps at once is rarely practical, both financially and in terms of time and effort. Furthermore, if you prioritize a lower-priority vulnerability first, cybercriminals can swoop in and exploit critical flaws in the blink of an eye.
Promotes informed budget decisions.
Budgets, when properly planned, can serve as a tool to assist you in meeting organizational objectives.
Randomly allocating funds to bridge gaps will neither help defend against threats. Nor would this be a wise budgetary decision. Instead, prioritize gaps and distribute financial resources based on vulnerability severity.
Improves control over transformation and upgrade work.
Timely upgrades and associated transformation are crucial for a business to stay competitive in constantly evolving business landscapes. Even so, it is critical to maintain control over such transitions. Otherwise, it could lead to confusion and poor decisions, ultimately harming your company’s growth.
Get a better understanding of upgrades and transformation by prioritizing gaps and systematically bridging them based on their severity.
Prevents burdening your key stakeholders.
Tending to all gaps at once can overwhelm your employees, in turn lowering their productivity and deteriorating customer service.
Avoid this to the greatest extent possible, such as by targeting appropriate improvements following your audit.
If your customers and employees are dissatisfied, your business can suffer serious setbacks such as employee attrition, customer churn, accidental data breaches and so on.
Collaborate for success.
Not sure where to start? We can help you prioritize technology gaps in order to optimize IT platforms and help you get the most out of your technology investment, all while ensuring uptime and productivity.
Check out our page on our network assessment services to learn how we can help your organization successfully prioritize technology gaps to achieve targeted goals in a sustainable manner.