TIPS FOR IMPROVING YOUR IT HYGIENE

Is your IT environment complex? Is your data “dirty”? Now is the perfect time to organize and clean your technology and improve your IT hygiene. Continue reading to hear some tips on how to improve your IT hygiene.

Having dirty data in your IT environment can leave your firm vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Data is one of the most vital assets for a company. So, with “dirty data”, this can leave your company at risk. Some of the most common types of “dirty data” are forgotten and duplicate data, devices that have reached end-of-life, and those that are no longer under maintenance or warranty.

UNDERSTANDING YOUR IT

Understanding your internal IT is vital when it comes to your IT hygiene. If a data breach occurs, your lack of knowledge relative to the existence of the data and your internal IT is not an acceptable excuse – or a remediation to the problem. Hackers can easily obtain information from forgotten devices potentially intercepting confidential data such as personal information, company information, and even financial data. It is important to also get rid of duplicate data because backup files can be misplaced and left behind, leaving hackers with additional access points into your network.

PROTECTING YOUR DATA

As stated above, the best way to protect your data is to understand your internal IT and the status of your devices. If you don’t know that information, then how can you protect it? Understanding which laptops, printers, scanners, hardware, software, IoT devices, routers, and so much more, will allow you to be able to protect your data to the fullest.

Once you have identified your data, it is recommended that you follow these best practices

• Keep up with patches to protect against software bugs
• Understand which devices have reached and which are nearing end-of-life
• Understand which devices are no longer under warranty
• Check to make sure that your devices are compliant
• Control and monitor file access so that employees only have access to files they need for their everyday work loads
• Practice good data hygiene by detecting, correcting, and removing invaluable data on a regular basis
• Audit your internal IT at least quarterly or twice per year

Looking to determine your IT hygiene? With ApexaiQ, we are able to evaluate each device using our massive and ever-growing database of device types, models, and obsolescence data. Get real-time reporting on End-of-Life and other vulnerabilities.

Contact us today to determine and improve your IT hygiene. You can also schedule a demo to see how ApexaiQ can be used in your company. https://www.apexaiq.com/schedule-a-demo/