HOW TO PRIORITIZE AND ADDRESS TECHNOLOGY GAPS
Refreshing an entire IT infrastructure at once is rarely practical — both financially and in terms of user experience. To make an improvement, you wouldn’t purposely close every lane of a major roadway at once. Instead, you would close one lane at a time during non-peak hours to do the work. The same logic applies to technology infrastructure updates, you just have to know where to start!
TECHNOLOGY PGRADE CHALLENGES – AVOID THESE HAZARDS
Few businesses can afford the monetary impact of ripping up and replacing an entire IT environment at once, let alone the productivity lost when workers wait for the new infrastructure to go live.
By starting with a sound technology strategy that is based on objective audits and health checks you can avoid many of these pitfalls:
An incomplete picture of your technology priorities
Allocating budget to less critical items
Leaving backdoors open to threat actors
Hampering employee productivity
MAP AN EFFICIENT PATH
Once you’ve identified the technology gaps in your IT infrastructure in terms of security, backup and compliance, you’ll need to prioritize those gaps based on what needs to be refreshed first. This is where the “stoplight approach” comes in handy.
The stoplight method is a simple way of categorizing gaps or vulnerabilities into red, yellow and green groupings based on their severity.
RED
The most severe vulnerabilities will be labeled as RED and must addressed as quickly as possible. A few vulnerabilities that can be counted under RED are:
- Missing or failing backups
- Unsecured remote connectivity and open network ports
- Computers or servers without Antivirus and Anti-malware protection
- “Stale” accounts on your local or cloud computing platforms
- Administrative rights assigned to non administrative staff
YELLOW
These gaps must always be on your radar but can be dealt with once the highest priority gaps are addressed.
Some of the gaps that come under this category are:
- Lack of multifactor authentication
- Failure of automated patching system
- Failure to enable account lockout for some computers
- Wifi networks that are not separated and isolated based on private/public usage
GREEN
These are the least critical gaps and you should gradually implement measures to bridge them after the high- and medium-priority gaps have been closed.
Some of the gaps that fall under the least priority or GREEN category are:
- Computers with operating systems nearing their extended support
- Out of date software packages and productivity suites
- No proactive training and awareness programs for staff
YOUR IT SOLUTIONS PARTNER TO HELP GET THERE FASTER!
Not sure where to begin? Tier 3 I.T. Solutions can assist you in prioritizing technology refreshes to optimize operational platforms and get the most out of your technology investment.