What to Include in an End-of-Year Technology Infrastructure Review

Things to Consider When Reviewing Your Technology at the End of the Year

An end-of-the-year technology review allows you to look at all areas of your I.T. infrastructure. Your security, efficiency, and bottom-line considerations will be the primary drivers for future initiatives.

Technology Policies

When your technology policies become outdated, employees stop following them. Review all your company policies to see if any require updating to reflect new working conditions. For example, if now you have some staff members working from home, ensure your device use policy covers remote requirements.

When you update policies, inform your employees so they can be refreshed on important information they may have forgotten since their onboarding.

Disaster Recovery Planning

When was the last time your company performed an incident response exercise? Do you have a list of steps for staff members to follow in the event of a natural disaster or cyber attack?

Take the time to go over disaster recovery and business continuity planning for the new year. You’ll need to also set up some dates for preparedness drills and training in the upcoming months.

I.T. Issues & Pain Points

You don’t want to undergo a significant I.T. upgrade without considering your employee pain points. Otherwise, you could miss out on some golden opportunities to improve staff productivity and well-being.

Survey your staff members on how they currently use technology. Ask them about their favorite and least favorite apps and their struggles. Let your employees tell you how they believe technology could improve to make their jobs better or help them be more productive. These suggestions will benefit your business and help you target the most impactful improvements.

Privileged Access & Abandoned Accounts

Perform an audit of your privileged accounts as part of your end-of-year review. As time passes, permissions can be misappropriated, leaving your company’s network at a higher risk of experiencing a major cyber attack.

You should make sure only those who need them have administrator-level permissions. The fewer privileged admin accounts you have in your business, the lower your cyber risk. Compromised privileged accounts and passwords open the door to significant damage you can potentially avoid.

While reviewing your accounts, also look for abandoned accounts. Close any inactive accounts since they are no longer being used. Leaving them active will leave your company vulnerable to security risks.

I.T. Upgrade & Transformation Plans

If you make I.T. upgrades and decisions “on the spot,” it can come back to haunt you. It’s best to plan out a strategy in advance so you can upgrade in an organized manner.

Have an I.T. vulnerability assessment conducted to get a list of potential problems your business should address. Eliminating vulnerabilities will improve your cybersecurity posture. Planning ahead allows you to budget for upgrades and avoid unplanned expenses.

Cloud Usage & Shadow I.T.

Review your company’s usage of cloud applications. Discover if certain apps are hardly used or if you have redundancies in your cloud environment. This review can help you cut waste and save money.

Also, look for uses of shadow I.T. by employees. These are cloud applications currently being used for work but have yet to go through company approval. Management might not even be aware of them. Remove this security risk by closing the accounts or officially approving them.

Customer-Centric Technology

Remember to look at the customer experience portion of your technology infrastructure. Go through your website and contact process just as a customer would.

If you become frustrated with things such as site navigation, load time, mobile experience, etc., your customers and leads probably do too. Include optimizations for your customer-facing technology in your new year plans.