Any IT infrastructure should not be supported by the business. Rather, any business IT infrastructure should support the business. It should support increased efficiency, help open up new revenue channels and empower stakeholders to be more productive. Anything less is a sell out; if this sounds like your business model as it currently stands, you need to do something about it fast.

Protect your business

With increasing exposure to digital technology comes increased potential for data theft or data mining as it is sometimes referred to. Network security, server security and stakeholder security according to the website ofCygnus-sys.comfollow is only as strong as the weakest link. Where that weakest link is you’ll never know unless you have an audit undertaken of your entire integrated systems.

However, as well as protecting your business from loss of data as a result of poor security and/or dishonest stakeholders, you also have to consider secure storage. Servers and other back up elements are all susceptible to flood, fire and other external destructive forces. If the worst happens, are your systems protected? If such an event occurred, could your business survive such a catastrophic event?

Secure your data

Once you have secured your datafollow from potential theft, securing it on a storage facility is no mean feat. If you have in house servers you have to ask the questions:

• How secure is the backup?
• Where is the back up of the backup stored?
• How easy would it be to access that data should the need arise?

In the main according to industry sources, lack of planning, inadequate policies and lack of awareness are responsible for most issues concerning data, security and/or lack of it. Apparently some fifty percent (50%) of small to medium sized businesses have zero disaster planning in place. Some of the ways in which data can be lost, stolen or misplaced are as follows:

• Inadequate backup technology
• Sensitive data stored on USB drives
• Poor physical protection of data storage

These are just a few examples but there are also many other reasons why data is lost, stolen or damaged. All these reasons, regardless of who, what, why and where the blame lies can damage a business beyond repair. It would be wise to back up your files to an external server or hard drive. However, if such precautions are not taken, all hope is not lost. Hard drive data recovery services can help get most, if not all your data back. But try not to resort to that if at all possible.

Audit and compliance

To protect systems and data as far as is reasonably practical requires regular auditing. As a result of such audits, compliance procedures can be enabled and engaged. Should the worst happen, there will be a disaster recovery plan in place to get everything back to normal as rapidly as possible. Even if the worst doesn’t happen but misfortune does show its face, rapid recovery is essential.

Even the auditing of software should be an element of your business IT model. Fines for unlicensed operation are commonplace, even if you have a license but it has lapsed.

Whether it is hardware, security, data protection, software auditing or network analysis, the only person who can maintain structure and security is you. Look at the bare bones of it and you’ll see how much you have to gain by undertaking a data and IT infrastructure analysis and audit.

You certainly don’t want to find out how much you can lose the hard way, do you?