When was the last time you conducted a comprehensive technology audit? If it’s been a while or hasn’t happened at all, you’re probably vulnerable to a cyberattack. Cybercrime shows no signs of slowing down and is expected to cost the world $10.5 trillion per year by 2025. If cybercrime were a country, it would be one of the world’s leading economies!
Are you confident that your organisation is secure with the current remote and hybrid work environments? Most businesses rushed to implement remote working capacities and left several security issues unchecked. This is where a technology audit can give you peace of mind.
An IT audit is a thorough analysis and assessment of an organisation’s IT infrastructure, policies and procedures. The auditor will run several tests, see if everything is in order and talk to people in the organisation to understand their processes, issues and usability challenges. This is the basic concept, but distinct managed services providers may act on a different approach. Spector further enhanced the standard IT Audit and included operational and businesses analysis. We’ll discuss these advancements later in this article.
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Importance of Technology Audits for Businesses
Here are some reasons why a technology audit is essential to organisational resilience and overall success:
- Detects security vulnerabilities
- Ensures that the organisation is up to date on security measures
- Establishes the foundation for the organisation’s new security policies
- Prepares the organisation to respond quickly and effectively in the event of a cyberattack
- Helps maintain compliance with various security regulations
For these reasons, it’s usually a good idea to perform a technology audit before refreshing your business technology.
Benefits of Technology Audits for Businesses
Comprehensive technology audits have three key benefits:
No Surprises
IT components that we use and trust every day may have hidden threats that we can easily overlook. If not addressed early on, such threats can quickly escalate into a full-fledged cyber attack. An IT audit is exceptionally beneficial when it comes to addressing this particular concern.
A properly planned auditing process creates a map of your IT environment that helps you understand how everything connects and which areas expose you to threats. This allows you to focus your remediation efforts where needed the most.
Consider this: What if one of your top executives was secretly selling all your intellectual property ideas to your main competitor? That could sink your company or significantly reduce your profit potential. Unmapped and unaccounted-for technology landscapes can lead to similar outcomes.
To avoid this, regularly monitor, update, patch and clean up the proverbial dust in your infrastructure. You might soon discover that someone intentionally or unintentionally downloaded a piece of malicious code that’s spreading like wildfire across your network, waiting for the perfect moment to demand a ransom or continue spying and stealing your best ideas.
Data-Driven Decision Making
A properly conducted technology audit will provide your organisation with valuable data that you can use to make core business decisions. Its value extends to security budgeting as well. A data-driven approach to developing cybersecurity strategies can assist you in making more informed budget decisions. By knowing where are your most damaging exposures, you’ll have a better idea of where to spend your money.
An audit can also help you prioritise your goals based on what’s most pressing, exposing vulnerabilities or causing productivity loss.
A Vision for the Future
An audit can lay the groundwork for an in-depth analysis. By identifying your current technology state, you can begin to plan and build your ideal tech structure. It’s a powerful tool that can assist you in determining what your company excels at right now and formulating an effective strategy for the future.
Armed with a thorough understanding of your technology’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, you can begin planning years in advance and share the vision with team members to keep them motivated.
You may identify the opportunity to expand your offerings to a digital audience or perhaps modernise your operations with new emerging technology. Whatever makes sense to your business may be within reach once you identify and establish that as a direction for your tech to evolve. Thus the technology audit serves as a vital step for a growing company.
Conducting The Gap Analysis – An Advanced Technology Audit for Businesses
Now that you understand the benefits of conducting a technology audit and may be considering auditing your organisation’s technology, keep in mind that not all audits are the same.
To ensure a technology audit is capable of causing an impact, it must first be comprehensible for business decision-makers and actionable. You’re looking for more than just a technical report with hundreds of tables and graphs.
At Spector, we named our tech audit the Gap Analysis; and its primary goal is to deliver a practical, comprehensive and straightforward report. We divide the analysed areas into different categories and dive deep to understand how your business is performing in each of them. Then we put together a Scorecard for each category and indicate the priorities that should be addressed for each.
This is how we begin working with new clients, and it brings our team a good understanding of how your business technology is performing and what is holding it back. Should you be interested in learning more, read our Gap Analysis Brochure or get in touch with us!
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