Spring officially arrives in the UK on 20th March and with it comes the concept of spring cleaning and getting everything tidied up, freshened up and ready for the rest of the year ahead. Spring cleaning isn’t just about dusting your office and shredding the paperwork you no longer need, it can also be a great opportunity to audit your IT systems and processes, getting rid of anything that is not working for you and implementing procedures to protect your data and enable you to work more efficiently.
So without further ado, and before spring arrives and forces you all into action, here are our top 5 steps to spring clean your IT systems:
1.Audit Your IT Systems And Security
We have spoken about it many times over the last few months, but it won’t hurt to reiterate the fact that the Covid-19 pandemic and increase in home working has exposed new vulnerabilities in IT systems and programmes which cyber criminals have been able to exploit. With home working looking likely to continue for many businesses, if you haven’t already done so, then now is the perfect time to have an IT security audit to find out exactly how safe your business and your data are.
Our cyber security audit reviews all of your IT infrastructure and technologies to analyse any potential issues and spot the holes in your armour. This might include checking:
- Email security – your emails are the most likely route for cyber criminals to get into your business, so we can review your email set up and configuration including anti spam, anti malware, 2FA (2 Factor Authentication) and anti phishing.
- Endpoints – whether your teams are working in the office or at home, they are likely to be using multiple devices to complete their work and not always paying attention to what they are clicking on. We can audit security on all endpoints to make sure you have the right systems in place to protect your business data.
- Network security – we can check security on all the devices that connect the outside world to your business – including routers, VPNs and firewalls.
2.Assess Your IT Strategy
Strategies exist to help your business reach its aims and objectives so ask yourself where is your business going? What are your current demands with regards to IT hardware and systems and how is that likely to change in the future?
Our IT Strategy service audits your current processes and requirements and sets out a roadmap of short, medium and long term IT requirements to help your business reach its goals. It gives you a clear plan to work towards and the knowledge that you are on the right path and have the right equipment, systems and processes to get there and be efficient in doing so.
3.Protect Your Data
One of the things our IT security review is likely to flag up is how you currently protect your business data. This is the vital information that you could not be without and which if your premises burnt down tomorrow, you would not be able to restart without. Many businesses, however, do not have a clear plan in place to protect their data. If you are one of them, and are worried about cyber security, it’s a good idea to have an IT security audit and then to implement the recommendations which might include:
4.Make Regular Back Ups
Making regular backups of your important data is vital to business continuity. In the event of disaster, having back ups that you can resort to, whether it is a back-up of your website, customer data, vital processes or digital work, will enable you to continue operating pretty much as normal.
One of the things that an IT strategic review might uncover is that you don’t back up your data, or that you are not doing it regularly enough or to a secure enough location. That’s where we can help, setting up the cloud infrastructure you need to carry out regular back ups that can be easily accessed.
5.Get Help With Your IT Support
As you spring clean your IT systems you might notice that you don’t really have the time or the in-house expertise to effectively manage your IT infrastructure and processes. That’s where the help of a professional IT support company can be invaluable, leaving you the time to get on with what you are great at and giving you the confidence that your systems are being monitored and issues are dealt with swiftly.
If you’d like this reassurance, or would like to find out more about our IT strategic review or IT security audit please call Matrix IT on 01329 888 444 or click here to send us a message.
