Is your IT infrastructure secure and safe from cyberattacks? As 2017 unfolds, cybersecurity remains a pressing concern that no one can or should ignore. “No locale, industry or organization is bulletproof when it comes to the compromise of data,” Verizon’s 2016 Data Breach Investigations Report states.
Businesses of all sizes and across all industries around the world have been targeted by hackers and cybercriminals. Data breaches continue to show up regularly in the news. In fact, the number of data breaches in the U.S. increased by 40 percent from 2015 to 2016, reaching a record high of 1,093 last year, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center. Breaches involving sensitive information can have devastating consequences for businesses, and avoiding them requires constant vigilance since hackers and malware become more sophisticated and dynamic.
As a result, it’s more important than ever for all organizations to take action to safeguard their IT infrastructure from cybercriminals. If you’d like to secure your infrastructure but aren’t sure about the process, Stratosphere Networks’ guide to infrastructure security can provide you with guidance. For the next few months, we will cover one of the steps every week on this blog, so be sure to check back regularly to learn about the whole program.
The first step that we’ll cover in this entry is performing a security audit. You can’t properly secure your IT infrastructure without first figuring out what your starting point is and how much work you need to do. Here are a few things that performing a security audit will accomplish for your business:
1. Establish benchmarks for your organization. Evaluating the current level of security for your IT infrastructure will help you set benchmarks related to where you are now and what you would like to accomplish/where you would ideally like to be.
2. Identify vulnerabilities. An audit will include an analysis of the gaps in your current security services/solutions and pinpoint places where your infrastructure is vulnerable to cyberattacks. This will include testing to determine if any of your devices are vulnerable to cybercriminals and data breaches.
As a result, you’ll know exactly what you need to focus on and where you should concentrate your efforts to shore up your defenses.
3. Provide a list of action items. A comprehensive IT audit will help your company create a list of the actions you need to perform to fix the vulnerabilities identified in your current defenses.
A security audit serves as a great starting point for any business looking to protect its IT infrastructure from cybersecurity threats. However, an audit is only the beginning of the process: Many more steps are necessary to fully secure your infrastructure. Be sure to check back next week for step 2.
In the meantime, if you’d like to learn more about IT security, feel free to contact our expert team at Stratosphere Networks by calling 877-599-3999 or emailing sales@stratospherenetworks.com. We provide a full range of advanced cybersecurity solutions and services and would be happy to answer any questions you might have.
