In this day and age, IT is essential for organisations. Grapevine specialises in providing IT support to companies in Visalia and Bakersfield. Yet, new technologies and systems that organisations might use are always emerging. In this article, we’ll look at several IT best practises for expanding enterprises:

1. IT audits

IT audits help you find issues with your IT infrastructure before they develop into major issues. The majority of businesses take a reactive strategy to IT, which is IT suicide! An IT reactive approach may appear to be a decent choice, but it will end up costing you a lot of money. Your IT management shouldn’t be centred on putting out fires. Regular IT audits are necessary to implement a procedure that improves your IT infrastructure.

An in-depth strategy to IT administration equips you with the knowledge you need to comprehend how technology impacts your business and enables you to picture how your organisation will appear after technology is supporting it as you desire. As a result, you can start using technology to achieve your business goals instead of worrying about downtime. After you’ve integrated IT with your organisational goals, it will start to function as a resource. Consider how properly employing your IT infrastructure will help you accomplish your goals rather than focusing on IT management.

2. IT plan

You are planning to fail if you don’t make a plan. Regular planning is necessary to ensure the predictability and control of IT operations. Without a solid IT strategy, it’s very likely that the projects you’ll be working on will end up being resource and cash drains with little to show for it. The likelihood of surprises will decrease with a sound plan that fully evaluates your IT infrastructure.

Unplanned outages, security breaches, and malfunctions all blur together in the absence of a strong plan. As a result, their impact on your business is not evaluated. You won’t be able to determine your exact IT spend as a result. An effective IT strategy promotes the use of best practises and monitors any deviations. As a result, your IT costs will become predictable and therefore reasonable.

It is easy to track deviations and inconsistencies and understand how they affect your business when you have an IT plan in place. This puts you in a position where you can start looking into the underlying cause and determining how to prevent such problems in the future.

3. Cyber Security

You’re in for a shock if you think a tiny business is immune to cyberattacks. According to smallbiztrends.com, 43% of cyberattacks in 2016 targeted small businesses; nevertheless, just 14% of these organisations believe their cybersecurity is very effective at lowering cyber risks and vulnerabilities.

As a small business owner, you should be prepared to protect your organisation and the data of your clients from hackers. These cyberattacks come in a wide variety of forms, such as phishing, malware, spyware, ransomware, etc. Due to limited resources and competing objectives, small business owners find it challenging to keep up with the most recent technical developments or even to protect their computers from malware and hackers. Because we take cybersecurity so seriously, we’ve published a number of blogs that provide information, offer guidance, and provide general education.

• Follow tech news to stay informed about new dangers, security upgrades, bug fixes, etc.

• Maintain system updates. Applications and operating systems are updated to resolve identified security flaws. By keeping your system updated, you can stop attackers from exploiting known software flaws.

• If you ever become a victim of malicious software, you can keep your files safe and restore your system with the help of a backup of your data.

• It’s crucial to educate your team on cybersecurity threats because human error presents the biggest danger. With a little education, the majority of cyberattacks can be prevented because they are identifiable. Make sure you have at least a basic security policy covering emailing, file sharing, system updates, device and network access, and password best practises in place to protect yourself from common phishing and malware risks.

• Network security – Your WiFi gear serves as the front door to your complete IT infrastructure. You must therefore make sure to secure your WiFi network. Never make use of the router’s default factory password. WiFi Protected Access II is the kind of code to employ for security purposes. To prevent strangers from accessing your internal network, build a distinct guest WiFi network with special passwords and security measures.

• Management of passwords and two-factor authentication (2FA) – Use of a multilayered security system that combines a memorised password with an OTP is strongly encouraged (One Time Password). Using a password manager like LastPass with an authenticator like Google Authenticator is a good illustration.

4. Business Compliance Needs

The regulatory climate for your organisation is presumably always changing because technology is developing so swiftly. As a result, you must be aware of the compliance requirements and keep up with any changes to the legislation that may have an impact on your industry. This implies that you need to keep your IT plan current. You should put your strategy in writing and include, at the very least, a roadmap for hardware and software compliance. At least once a year, this document needs to be evaluated, and it should be compared to both the broader Business/IT strategy and the most recent compliance criteria.

Also, you should have a minimum set of privacy policies. Even if you do not handle sensitive customer information, you should nonetheless follow best practises in this case. These recommendations must include information on what to do in the event of a data breach. Having a document you can refer to in uncertain situations is always beneficial, whether you need to communicate with your clients, regulatory bodies, or post it on your website.

5. Asset Management

Productivity can only be increased with a solid asset management system. It gives you a complete image of all of your assets, including your hardware, software, cloud infrastructure, virtual machines, and other resources. With comprehensive asset management, you can establish and maintain all of your IT infrastructure’s records in one location. Additionally, it ensures that your new hires are immediately ready for digital integration.

Your asset management system will guarantee that every one of your assets is being utilised to its fullest extent and that any that are nearing the end of their useful life are replaced before a breakdown takes place. Lead times should be considered while making any purchases because you don’t want to have too much inventory and run out of money. Keeping your assets inactive while you wait for a malfunction or a time when they will be needed can cost you more money. By using an asset management system, you may simply achieve this.

In addition to centrally managing your IT assets, an asset management system should be able to schedule and monitor purchases, offer data on asset types, and keep track of contract expiration and renewals. You can keep track of your assets and easily expand your IT infrastructure as needed with the aid of a central management system.

We assist Bakersfield and Visalia businesses in maximising their use of technology

All organisations should embrace technology since it can significantly improve how smoothly and effectively they operate. Hence, if you are a business owner in Bakersfield or Visalia and need help with any of these technologies or anything else related to IT, please get in touch with us right away.

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