Whether your are an IT manager or an executive, ensuring that your firm’s computer technology is robust enough to last far into the future is a never-ending challenge.
Here are some solid options to consider as you future-safe your company’s computer tech:
Move a portion if not all of your data center to cloud servers: For the longest time, it was the norm to store all of your data in-house on company servers or the corporate data center. That paradigm has certainly changed over the past few years as high level security data centers came online, providing full redundancy in the cloud at a lower cost than most companies could offer in-house. With full redundancy, your data is protected now and in the future without compromising security.
Automate servers and then wall them up: Some of the largest firms in the world have been experiencing problems with theft from their IT facilities. One firm in particular had a large government call them to tell them they had found a USB stick with most of the secret data that they protected for that client on it in the company parking lot. Having dodged a bullet, they immediately setup a building that contained servers for several clients. The difference? The servers were automated and remotely controlled by admins only. Humans are not allowed into that building. The net result was greater client acceptance of their practices and a lack of theft.
Air gap your servers where appropriate: If you cannot automate an entire section of your computer inventory, you can always look at air gapping options. Air gapping is where you physically disconnect network segments so that there is no way a certain group of people can access data on another group of computers. From a security standpoint, it makes a lot of sense for the future. When Spotify was hacked recently, out of all the damage that was done to their network, only one customer’s records were accessed by the hackers- meaning that air-gapped or not, keeping network segments and data separate will pay dividends.
Purchase rugged industrial or military spec computers: If you have industrial operations, sales reps that are constantly on the road, or an interest in having your equipment last for a long time, buying rugged computers makes sense. The components are individually chosen and selected in order to handle maximum shock, wear, and whatever extreme conditions that you might put them through. With development costs defrayed by military contracts, you also end up paying a fraction of the cost that went into creating them.
Consider a new paradigm for your network security: Several high-profile companies with sophisticated security systems have been hacked in the past few years. So often in fact, that a whole new class of software is coming onto the market. The new type of software is built into your operating system and monitors for any unauthorized access, sending a malignant virus back to any unauthorized user. The parameters for what you want to do with computers that attack your systems are variable. You can set them to provide a warning to the hacker, take over their system, or destroy the machine that hacked you.
Consider looking into it for your high security system needs.
Transition to open source software: Whenever possible, a transition to open-source software means that your investment is protected for as long as the application or operating system remains under development, which is usually a long time. You won’t need to worry as much about hardware-busting upgrades to operating systems, or incompatibility in document or file formats because a vendor has decided to move everyone who pays forward. If you want to upgrade, you merely need to download the latest version.