In today’s world, the one consistent thing about information technology is that it’s always changing. Hackers never stop trying to find ways to infiltrate individual and corporate databases, and they only keep evolving their strategies as people get smarter about using the internet.
Because of that, it’s critical that your business never stops evolving its strategies so that you can stay a step ahead of nefarious hackers and protect your company’s information. In order to do that, you’ve got to make sure that you’re asking the right questions so that you’re operating under best practices with your IT strategy. Here are a few important queries to make before you implement anything!
What is the Goal of This Strategy?
Before you get started with any strategy, you need to know what it’s designed to achieve and how it’s going to make that happen. One of the first questions you should ask is whether your IT strategy is designed to be proactive or reactive. A proactive strategy is meant to prevent something from happening at your business, while a reactive strategy is designed to respond to an attack and prevent it from happening again. For example, if you’ve seen a competitor show up in the news after getting hacked and your IT team wants to upgrade your firewall as a deterrent, that’s meant to be proactive at your own firm.
You’ll also want to make sure that you completely understand the point of your IT strategy. If your team is planning to start security-activity monitoring to see if your employees are using the web correctly, that should be clearly expressed to you as the goal of the strategy. When you’re working with a reputable IT company, such as Wavestone US, you should be able to ask any questions you want to explain why your IT experts think this is a good strategy and what they hope to gain from it. A reputable company will be able to break things down so that you have a clear picture of all of the details and understand the point of your endeavors.
How Will We Implement This Strategy?
Just because your IT experts think that you have a good strategy doesn’t mean that it’s guaranteed to work. In fact, a strategy is only going to work if the IT experts and the rest of the company are on the same page. What you want to establish here is what everyone’s responsibility will be in making sure that this strategy gets off the ground and sets you up for a successful defense of important information.
That means that you need your IT staff to communicate to you what they’re going to need from everyone in order for them to do their job properly. For example, if your team needs to start using new programs or applications in order for your IT team to properly put the strategy in place, you’ll need to figure out a training program for the rest of your team so that you can keep them on task while making things as easy as possible for the IT guys.
What Vulnerabilities Does This Strategy Have?
No IT strategy is going to be 100 percent foolproof. The reality is that it’s impossible to know everything that hackers are going to try, and the best thing that you can do is to prepare yourself for the worst-case scenario. That means knowing up front where your setup might be vulnerable and what you can do to try to close those loopholes.
This is where it can be very beneficial to work with an off-site IT company, such as Wavestone US. When you work with a reputable IT company, you can have them take a hard look at your network and see where you might be most vulnerable to an attack. If they can find a way into your network before a hacker does, you might be able to come up with a second strategy that can minimize that vulnerability and prevent someone from exploiting it and causing some real damage to your network.
Even if there isn’t an obvious vulnerability in your network, it’s still a great idea for you to get extra information from an off-site IT company. Remember, when it comes to stopping hackers, information is your best ally. Knowing what you don’t know and fixing those gaps in your knowledge can help you provide the best possible IT strategy and make it easy for hackers to view your company as too tough of a target.
Final Words
Ideally, you want to make hackers rationalize that your business is just not worth the effort. These are people who simply want to make money off your information, and they don’t care who they hurt as long as they get something valuable for their efforts. If you’ve protected your information with a strong IT strategy that you understand, they’ll likely move on to a more vulnerable option.
