For More Secure IT, Plan a Tech Spring Cleaning Today

Many of us feel the pull to organize and clean as soon as warm spring weather arrives. Although we live our lives online almost as much as we live off-line, many of us have never thought about spring cleaning from a digital perspective. By refreshing and updating our security, we can help ensure more secure IT and more reliable network security infrastructure. 

Building and managing better IT solutions is easier when we’re continually assessing and evaluating our policies, keeping what works and discarding or changing what doesn’t. Too many people have become complacent and don’t realize that the tools and policies they put in place months or even years ago are no longer offering the protection they need.

To ensure ongoing confidence in our network security, we must begin to incorporate regular “spring cleaning” sessions, which will give us an opportunity to eliminate bad digital habits and update cyber procedures and policies that need to be refreshed.

Let’s discuss how organizations can rethink spring cleaning from a digital perspective, ensuring more proactive and secure IT policies, tools and assets.

How an Effective Cleaning Routine Can Lead to More Secure IT  

Too many companies go for years without updating their technology strategy. This complacence and neglect can only lead to trouble, as it puts your company at risk for new threats from cybercriminals and other bad actors, who are actively working out new ways to target companies like yours every day. By prioritizing regular spring cleanings, you can ensure a more responsive approach to cybersecurity. Here’s where we’d start.

Company physical assets

Every company has that useless rack of servers or a closet full of old laptops and PCs, phones and other personal physical assets that are no longer in use. There’s no reason to keep them around, so why have they continued to pile up?

The most secure way to handle these unwanted assets is destruction, especially if you work in an industry that’s subject to compliance regulations regarding confidential data. itSynergy uses a massive hydraulic press to physically destroy assets like hard drives, but if you’re confident in simply wiping them clean, you can recycle them or donate them to a local charity.

Clean and organize

In addition to safely disposing of redundant assets, companies should prioritize a regular cleaning and organization of physical assets that are still in use. This includes servers and other equipment that is hard to service or manage because of tangled cables or messy, cluttered server closets.

A really helpful approach is to take some time and color-code everything in your server room. Ensuring you have the correct length of cable will also help minimize unnecessary clutter.

Digital and cloud organization

Organizing files and auditing administrative permissions and users is also a great way to improve security during a regular spring cleaning. We’ve seen the benefits firsthand.

During a recent service call at a client’s organization, we realized that their CFO had been given administrative rights to the entire system, an oversight we quickly rectified to prevent significant – and unnecessary – risk exposure.

Many companies put themselves at great risk by giving administrative permissions freely. Spring cleaning is a great opportunity to audit who among your staff have elevated rights to your system and whether they really need to have those permissions. Then, you can remove unnecessary permissions, along with outdated users and accounts.  

Unused apps and software

The more applications and software you have installed on your system, the greater your risk from outside threat actors. On a regular basis, evaluate which apps are regularly in use, and remove the ones that haven’t been used in awhile to decrease your attack surface and boost the security of your system.  

Cyber policies

In addition to decluttering server closets, auditing permissions and organizing your apps, companies should regularly take the opportunity to evaluate and update their cyber policies. If you have any of the following policies active within your organization, you should be developing and maturing them on a regular basis.

• Acceptable use
• Access control
• Change management
• Information security
• Remote access
• Disaster recovery
• Business continuity
• And many more

By ensuring that these policies continue to reflect your needs and priorities, you can ensure better and more responsive IT solutions.

How a Managed Service Provider Like itSynergy Can Help

Many organizations feel so overwhelmed by the thought of implementing these policies that regular evaluation and maintenance feel completely out of the question. That’s where an IT consultant like itSynergy comes in.

Our outsourced IT specialists will make sure you don’t get behind on these important tasks and can often step in to take over management of your IT environment, keeping it running smoothly behind the scenes, so your internal team can focus on core business goals.   

IT management is our specialty, and we work diligently to ensure that whatever solutions you’re offered are appropriate to your needs, so you’re never paying for services or tools that aren’t useful. Our expertise helps ensure lower IT maintenance costs and reduces risk exposure, especially when we’re able to collaborate with your internal team on a regular spring cleaning schedule.

Contact us today for a risk assessment, so we can determine the best way for our partnership to begin.