Nowadays, every organization is connected to the digital world. In order to safeguard against security threats, prevent data breaches, and protect sensitive information, companies must be aware of the top risks to IT security.
Data Insecurity
Data breaches are more than just dangerous to enterprises. After a major data breach, Google shut down its social media network Google+ due to reputational damage. When hackers accessed the personal data of 148 million Americans, Equifax faced hefty financial loses and lost a third of its market value. After Uber’s 2016 breach, it faced legal liability and $150 million in fines. While hackers and exposed data are bad enough, an even larger problem is internal data theft by employees. The leakage of valuable IP, pricing information, or confidential customer and employee data can be fatal to organizations of all sizes.
In order to ensure data security, businesses must choose software that controls vendor, provider, AND internal staff access to data by utilizing a secure interface, precise permissions, and well-defined user groups.
Inflexibility
Many enterprises aren’t aware of the underlying infrastructure supporting their applications. Systems that aren’t scalable to several times the anticipated server load are susceptible to outages, underperformance, and reliability issues.
If organizations want to scale, they must have software that can manage rapid growth. Ensure that your business applications are hosted on a secure and reliable cloud provider that offers flexible, scalable infrastructure with uptime guarantees.
Vulnerability
Natural or human-caused disasters such as deleted databases or office fires can destroy IT and cripple an organization. Given the importance of these digital systems, it’s crucial that organizations identify weaknesses and secure systems before disaster strikes. In order to ensure survivability, business applications should be hosted on a secure server that replicates data on a distant (500 miles or more) server and can recover it easily.
Compliance Failure
Regulatory agencies attempt to safeguard against the risks that digital commerce poses. As a result, organizations face an ever-growing number of regulatory requirements that IT systems must administer. Unfortunately for businesses, this means the chances of compliance failures are only increasing, which can result in capital loss, legal ramifications, or worse. Instead, businesses that automate compliance by integrating it into business processes will avoid compliance failure and mitigate regulatory risks.
Failed Implementation
Only 29% of IT projects succeed, while 19% are considered utter failures (according to The Standish Group’s “Chaos Report”). There are countless examples of large-scale IT project failures and billions of dollars are wasted. For example, the portal for the Affordable Care Act, initially a $100 million projected, cost $1.7 billion to build and was unusable since users could not even sign up.
In order to avoid a failed implementation, it’s crucial to find a software provider that creates a solid implementation plan with development and deployment milestones, maintains a budget and schedule, and uncovers obstacles well in advance of the point of no return. By using a provider with a history of success and an unconditional satisfaction guarantee on the software, enterprises can mitigate risk.
In today’s world, IT risk management is essential to create a successful enterprise and protect from the risks that can threaten a company’s reputation, financial position, and overall survival. Adopt these five IT risk fundamentals to secure your company and mitigate the risks to IT operations and your organization as a whole.
For more on this topic, read this IT Pro Portal article: “IT risk management fundamentals for the digital age” by Colin Earl, Agiloft’s Founder and CEO.
