3 Predictions We’re Making About Network Security

3 Predictions We’re Making About Network Security

Innovation has always been a major part of building better solutions, but some of the most recent trends have been in regard to enhancing security.

Adapting to the threat environment is one of the most important parts of running a business, so innovation has been geared toward giving users and organizations alike the security they need.

That being said, a lot can change in a short period of time. Let’s take a look at some predictions for how security will change in the near future.

Prediction 1

Penetration testing will happen more often than ever, thanks to A.I. and automation.

Penetration testing is one of the best ways that your organization can enhance network security–particularly because it’s much easier to identify weaknesses that your staff may have overlooked.

Hiring an external third party to handle this is a great way to make sure that any internal mistakes aren’t repeated. Basically, penetration testing is a time-consuming process that is better left to someone other than your internal staff, who are likely to have their own responsibilities to attend to.

However, artificial intelligence and automation have made it so that even less time has to be wasted on security testing.

Now that these processes can be done more frequently due to the process being automated, you can save more time than ever before. Plus, consider the fact that so much technology is added to an infrastructure in just a single calendar year, and you have a disaster waiting to happen–that is, unless you are running frequent penetration testing.

Prediction 2

Unified policies will appear that bridge between public and private clouds.

Cloud technology is more accessible than it has ever been before, prompting businesses to use both private and public cloud solutions to varying degrees. As a result, since they both have their benefits, hybrid cloud solutions are more popular today.

One of the biggest shortcomings of such a convenient solution is that you can’t consolidate security policies to simplify the management of a large infrastructure, but this could change in the near future–especially when you consider how quickly technology develops.

Industry professionals suspect that a multi-cloud management platform will soon be able to synchronize with your private and public clouds to create a single control panel for all of your needs.

Prediction 3

Endpoint security will be more on point.

The biggest threats to your organization’s security are the people using your technology. In recent years, social engineering has increased in scope and scale, taking advantage of the rather unpredictable nature of mobile device security.

Hackers are often able to take advantage of the weaker security on mobile devices to infiltrate networks and cause trouble. There still isn’t a single unified solution for this issue, but this is likely to change in the near future.

Businesses want an easier time managing and maintaining mobile device security, so it’s only a matter of time before a unified solution presents itself in some capacity.

You can count on WheelHouse IT to stay connected to the most recent developments in technology development.

To learn more about the latest solutions, reach out to us at (877) 771-2384.

How to Be Sure Your Business Continuity Plan is Complete

How to Be Sure Your Business Continuity Plan is Complete

While it may not be fun to consider the worst-case scenario, it is important that you have a plan to ensure that your business will be able to survive when the chips are down. This plan to ensure that your business will continue is called (appropriately enough) a business continuity plan, and needs to address a few things that we will go over here.

In order to really be effective, a business continuity plan needs to be comprehensive – otherwise, your operations will still be interrupted when you encounter a lack of some resource that you need access to. A complete plan will document the following considerations and the strategies for completing them:

Threat Matrix

The first thing your plan should address is the variety of threats it might face, from the mundane events that can be mitigated with relatively little effort to the catastrophic, do-or-die disasters that require in-depth planning and proactive activities to weather. This portion of your plan should acknowledge these threats and propose your company’s response to them.

Critical Processes

Every business has workflows, chains of command, and other processes that it requires to properly operate. Your business continuity plan needs to both identify and detail these processes so they are able to continue with minimal interruption.

Command Chain

Or in other words, who’s in charge. A hierarchy of authority is crucial to the continuation of the business as someone needs to be in command, and equally importantly, have it be common knowledge that they are in command to avoid grandstanding. Otherwise, nothing can or will be accomplished.

Employee Safety and Evacuation Plan

In order for business to continue, there has to be someone there to continue it. A business continuity plan needs to have a dedicated section that addresses how and when to evacuate employees to ensure their safety in a dangerous situation.

Communication Plan and Contact Information

Anyone associated with your company, from your employee to your clients to your business partners, needs to be kept in the loop throughout whatever scenario is in play. Your plan needs to address when, how, and why different contacts should be updated.

Backup Processes and Location

In order for your business continuity preparations to be complete, you should be maintaining a backup somewhere offsite – ideally in a cloud solution. Another piece of your plan should be dedicated to ensuring that this backup can be accessed. This also pertains to the possibility of identifying a backup location to turn to when your original offices are uninhabitable in order to resume at least some semblance of productivity.

Inventory and Infrastructure

There are a lot of pieces to the typical workplace infrastructure, including hardware and software. Therefore, you need to be sure that you can reliably identify the inventory and infrastructure you had for both insurance purposes and to acquire replacements.

End of Incident Criteria

Just like you need to know when something crosses the line over to “disaster,” you need to know when the disaster ends. Creating a list of conditions that must be met before reviewing the damage and beginning recovery will allow you to more efficiently begin the process, without jumping the gun and taking more damage.

Post-Incident Debriefing

Finally, when the dust has settled, you need to survey the damage and deliberate how things could have been handled better. Take the opportunity to review your business continuity strategy and make any changes and improvements. Your business continuity plan should also include a template to create a questionnaire to have your contacts fill out to give you the maximum amount of feedback and insight. This will allow you to make your plan better, in case of “next time.”

If you see to proactively considering, strategizing, and documenting these facets to your plan, you will have a much greater chance of a successful recovery. WheelHouse IT can assist you with the technological aspects of it. Give us a call at (877) 771-2384 for more information, or to get an evaluation of your current solutions.