The Best Way to Protect Your Network is By Performing a Thorough Assessment

As a business owner, you understand that there are always criminals on the lookout waiting to take advantage of the slightest crack in your defenses. They want to steal from you and see you fail. Cyber security is one of the most important avenues of defense your business should take advantage of, especially considering the fact that most threats to your organization aren’t apparent until it’s too late.

It’s easy to think that your business isn’t the target of a threatening cyber attack, especially if you’ve gone quite a while without experiencing one. Despite the harmless nature of the Internet at times, it hides a crazy amount of threats that can potentially cost your business everything. Even if hackers aren’t actively seeking to bring you down, you might catch a stray virus or piece of malware that could compromise your entire data infrastructure. Your organization, regardless of how small it is, holds data that can be valuable to hackers.

Take, for example, the multitude of financial information you obtain from your clients, like credit card numbers. This information is stored somewhere on your network, and it’s used to bill your clients whenever they make a purchase or payment. The same goes for your human resources department, which handles all of the personal information of your employees, like Social Security numbers. A hacker could have a field day with all of this information, and sensitive records like these are sold for a fortune on the black market.

Therefore, the best way you can keep your business safe from threats is to consider the potential avenues of attack. How prone is your hardware or software to security vulnerabilities, and are they using the latest versions of their respective operating systems? What kind of security precautions have you taken to ensure that hackers cannot breach your network?

Even with a complex computing infrastructure you might find vulnerabilities that aren’t easy to identify. Rather than have a hacker point out a vulnerability in your system’s defenses, take the time to perform a comprehensive internal assessment so you will find the cracks in your security before hackers take advantage of them. During your assessment, you’ll likely find several places you can improve your network’s integrity, and you want to take action against these vulnerabilities as soon as possible.

In this case, it’s often better that an external party handles the network assessment, simply because they will indiscriminately analyze every single part of your technology infrastructure. You’ll get honest results and suggested plans of action, which will help you improve operations and security. Additionally, it’s likely that your small or medium-sized business doesn’t have a residential IT staff, so it makes more sense to outsource this responsibility to professionals who are willing and able to help your organization optimize its security.

Contact k_Street Consulting, LLC today for our network consultation service. We can scan your entire IT infrastructure for critical factors that could influence, and even jeopardize, future operations. Give us a call at (202) 640-2737 to learn more.