Why does my Calgary business need a network assessment?
Network security is – or should be – at the forefront of every organizational strategy.
There is simply too much evidence that points to inaction as a root cause of security breaches.
Can you prevent every attack?
Maybe not.
But the proactive organizations – the ones that assess risk, address risk, and reduce risk – are more likely to survive an attack should one happen.
According to the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, small and medium organizations are most likely to face cyber threat activity in the form of cybercrime that often has immediate financial or privacy implications.
To minimize the risk of cyber threat activity, small and medium organizations must focus on creating and maintaining an efficient network. This begins with a thorough network assessment.
What Is a Network Assessment?
A network assessment is a proactive tool to help prevent risk, downtime, security breaches, and loss of revenue.
There are many areas where a network assessment can help an organization achieve peak efficiency, but the main areas covered by a network assessment include analyzing infrastructure, security, and performance, to determine:
Resource Use
Are you over-utilizing resources and putting a strain on your network?
Do you have underutilized systems that could increase your efficiency?
Do you have assets that are nearing the end of their life cycles?
A network assessment can help you more effectively allocate resources, to improve productivity and save money while planning for necessary investments.
Security Risks
Do you have regulatory compliance requirements?
Handle secure customer data?
Have proprietary business information to protect?
A comprehensive assessment will quickly identify urgent security risks that can be immediately addressed.
Bandwidth Issues
An assessment can identify bandwidth bottlenecks and alleviate them with network traffic control and increased bandwidth.
A network assessment will help identify installation or connectivity problems as well as performance issues caused by users or apps.
It is impossible to plan for future growth and innovation without knowing the existing state of your network.
5 Reasons to Get a Network Assessment ASAP
A network assessment is the only way to know where your business stands with security and infrastructure. From being able to compete effectively for customers to having the ability to pivot as needed in our rapidly-changing environment, you can need to know the status of your network so you can determine where you need to invest in your infrastructure and security, what strengths you offer when competing for contracts, and how well you’re achieving required compliance. Here are five compelling reasons to request a network assessment right now:
1 Proactive Look at Your Infrastructure
Sure, you could wait until a server goes out and you have prolonged downtime in which you’re unable to serve your customers. But it’s better to know early what the status is with your current IT infrastructure. Not only can you plan and prioritize needed maintenance, but you’ll be able to evaluate whether or not replacing servers versus shifting to the cloud delivers the best ROI.
2 Identify Security Gaps before a Breach Happens
A network assessment can help you be more prepared to handle cyber threats. You can’t defend your network against cyber threats if you don’t understand how all the moving parts work together – including people, policies, processes, software, and hardware. A network assessment reveals the gaps in your security so that you can fix them before the hackers find them.
3 Save Money
One of the reasons to request a network assessment right now is because without one, you don’t know how much money you’re throwing away on misallocation of resources, unused technology, or a poorly designed architecture.
4 Process Improvement
Not only can a network assessment help reveal vulnerabilities in your security, but it can also help you identify where you have issues with your process. For example, you may identify unsecured access points that are not only a risk but also a failure of policy and procedure. You can identify areas in which employee training needs to be strengthened and improve your ability to meet compliance requirements.
5 Leverage Your Assessment to Get Buy-In from the C-Suite
A network assessment tells the story of risk, opportunity, and need in a way that gets the C-suite to sign on and be willing to invest in the needed upgrades. Whether it’s a shift to the cloud, new infrastructure investment, stronger policies and procedures, or better employee training (or in many cases, all of that) it’s easier for a business leader to justify the cost when they can see how much it might cost not to act.
How Does a Network Assessment Work?
A comprehensive network assessment can help you determine your network’s overall performance and capacity and isolate network issues in your existing infrastructure. The assessment can help you determine your readiness to begin network infrastructure improvements and help prepare your organization for a shift to the cloud.
Network assessments are essential for monitoring network health. We start by:
- Defining the scope of the assessment. Our experts will discuss your goals regarding your use of the network now and in the future.
- Reviewing of documentation and identification of any known pain points.
- Conducting network discovery, including traffic patterns, route switch and security assessment, identifying areas of concern.
- Analyzing user activity and cloud applications to identify security gaps and risks.
Upon the completion of the network assessment, you’ll receive a comprehensive report outlining your current network state, identified gaps in security, an inventory of all network devices, an analysis of your network security, strengths, and weaknesses. In addition, we will provide analysis on how well your network can meet your business requirements and make suggestions for improvements, identifying any that are critical.
Why The ITeam Is Calgary’s Network Assessment Provider of Choice
A network assessment provides you with a complete inventory of your entire network. If you’re getting ready to grow your organization or if you are struggling with an underperforming or failing network, don’t waste another minute before requesting your network assessment. An assessment is the best place to start in order to align your infrastructure with your operational and compliance needs.
The ITeam Network Assessment Process
Initial Request
Fill in the Business Assessment form below with your information or request an assessment from a member of The ITeam.
Audit
One of our IT professionals will respond to you within 24 hours to schedule a time to audit your IT environment using network discovery tools.
We will also schedule to meet with your business stakeholders to discuss goals and current gaps.
Assessment
The assessment will be completed.
Report Delivery
The ITeam will return onsite at an agreed-upon time to deliver the results of our assessment.
The report will include our findings, estimated costs to remediate the current environment should there be any gaps and estimated costs to achieve any new goals as outlined by management.
Our team will also provide you with an ongoing Managed Services package in your report based on your business needs. This is offered at a monthly fixed rate to support your IT environment once remediation is complete.
Implementation
Should the client choose to move forward, the remediation project will be completed.
On-going Management
Enter into the day to day support and security management cycle with our Managed IT Services package.
The ITeam’s expert engineers can help assess your IT infrastructure. Contact us for a free consultation or schedule a network assessment today.