IT Security is arguably the most important aspect of your IT environment. Hackers are tirelessly thinking of new ways to break in, so we must always be thinking of ways to keep them out. Often times companies only focus on local security concerns, but should they? In the modern era of computing, one of the biggest challenges we face is public Internet security. When so many applications are cloud based, you must think outside of the “local security” box. The purpose of this write-up is to determine the level of your preparedness. The following topics should be evaluated with your outsourced managed IT vendor.
Employee Training:
- Have your employees been trained on general privacy and IT security protocols?
- Does your team have practices in place for when suspect emails show up?
- When a virus is detected on one of your machines, what do your employees do?
Security Software:
- Do you have antivirus and anti-malware software on all of your end points? End points include PC’s, tablets and any other computing device.
- Do you have intrusion prevention across your environment?
- Does your firewall block known virus spreading websites?
- Do you have a patch management solution in place? Does the patch management solution whitelist patches or just perform a blanket deployment?
Backup and Disaster Recovery:
- Do you have a disaster recovery and business continuity plan in place?
- Do you test this process to ensure it’s working properly?
- Does your backup solution have a single point of failure?
- Is virtualization possible when disaster strikes?
- What do you do in the event of ransomware, such as CryptoLocker?
- Accidentally erase an important document, is it recoverable?
