Audits. Nobody likes the term, and often, the mere mention of an audit is enough to make business owners cringe. It doesn’t have to be like that – audits can actually be opportunities. They highlight potential points of weakness that, when corrected, can actually enhance your bottom line.
If it’s been a while since you’ve had your network audited, you should embrace it, rather than shy away from it. Here are just a few of the ways that a network audit can improve your bottom line:
Less Downtime
If your network isn’t properly scaled for the traffic flowing through it, significant delays can be caused. Likewise, if there are bottlenecks caused by improper configurations or conflicting IP addresses, it can have a negative impact on employee productivity. Your own technology might be working against you. Once corrected, those problems vanish, and your productivity improves.
Identifying Security Risks
One of the biggest ways a network audit can help is by identifying gaps or holes in your system’s security. If you’ve got machines that don’t have all of the latest security patches, you might have easy ways past your security for a would-be hacker, and it only takes one successful breach to bring your company to its knees.
Backup Assurance
You’ve probably got some kind of data backup plan in place, but is it working the way you think it is? Are the backups actually occurring on schedule? Is all of your company’s most critical data included in the backup, or are there things that are being missed? If there are, then should the worst happen, you’re going to find yourself trying to do business without mission-critical data or information.
In business, information is power. Audits can provide you a window into the inner workings of your network that you just can’t get by other means. Take advantage of that fact and have a qualified network consultant regularly assess and audit your network’s integrity. The expertise provided isn’t expensive to acquire, and it could wind up saving you big, making it well worth the time and effort.
