End of Year Technology Review
It’s the end of another year and time to review your technology stack. One of the most important things that needs to be done annually is to look over everything you have. Do you have any aging servers, workstations, or laptops? It’s generally accepted that servers should be replaced every 4 to 6 years. Workstations and laptops are typically refreshed every 3 to 5 years. It just depends on how durable the equipment is. At a minimum, it would be advised to replace the storage media in everything you own every few years. Hard drives should be replaced with solid state drives and solid state drives should be cloned off onto new units to help prevent data loss. We can recover a failed hard drive or solid state and get your data back, but it’s expensive!
Another thing to look at is your chosen software that runs your business. As software ages, more and more security holes are discovered. When older software reaches what’s called its end-of-life, the developers cease to provide patches to shore up those security holes. This makes hacking into your technology a snap for intruders. We’ve had several of our new clients jump ship from other IT providers in the area this year. As we take them on and begin the onboarding process, the most common issues we’ve had to deal with is old, unsupported, highly vulnerable Windows servers, workstations, hardware firewalls that are unarmed for intrusion prevention, and extreme levels of HIPAA compliancy breaches. It’s no wonder we are seeing more and more successful intrusion and ransomware attacks on the Gulf Coast these days. Just because an IT provider really knew their stuff in decades past and are well-spoken in meetings doesn’t mean they have relevant security knowledge in this new day-and-age, and we’ve now seen the fallout first-hand. We also get to see what the other guys are using and it’s a good feeling to know that we’re using some of the most advanced security technology on the Gulf Coast thanks to our internal expertise combined with our globally-renowned partnerships.
Finally, it’s time to look at employee productivity. Are they utilizing your chosen technology stack in the most optimal way possible? When you spend money on IT, it can create as much as double the revenue generated by your employees, but only when they’re on-board with the changes and using the technology correctly. Make sure your people aren’t using shadow IT in their day-to-day handling of your sensitive and critical business data. Using stuff like Dropbox, personal Google Drives, and not having a way to encrypt email are all big no-no’s anymore. It’s time for that annual audit.
Has your IT provider been helping you keep up with your annual business process audits? If you only see them when there’s a problem, it might be time to start calling around to check out other options. Click to Call or Email us today. We would be happy to meet with you and discuss your needs.