Routine reassessments are an important part of managing your information technology. Here are the things to look at on an annual basis:

1. IT pain points

Knowing the answer to this can help you define your IT strategy for the next year and make sure you’re positioned to support the business in achieving its goals. Talk with the business about their satisfaction with all aspects of the IT services they receive, including basics like files, storage, and printing; telephone and audiovisual services; and sophisticated business applications.

2. IT policies

There are usually vast numbers of policies, including how systems are approved, which technologies are acceptable, and how employees are allowed to use them. Annual reviews make sure they reflect current technology deployments and business needs.

3. Disaster recovery and incident response plans

Whether you lose access due to an earthquake or ransomware, an updated disaster recovery plan ensures you can restore your systems. An incident response plan goes beyond recovering data to address other aspects of security breaches, such as dealing with the legal and public relations aspects and identifying and correcting the vulnerability.

4. Vendors

Unlike marriage contracts, contracts with vendors aren’t intended to be lifetime commitments. Review how well your vendor is living up to their end of the agreement, how easy they are to work with, and how necessary their product or service is before renewing any agreement. In addition, because third-party vulnerabilities are a leading cause of data breaches, annually assess their security profile.

5. Security logs and configurations

Annually reviewing and revising configurations, such as firewall rules, is critical to making sure they reflect current risks. In addition, there should be an annual security audit, possibly including penetration tests to find vulnerabilities. While security logs should ideally be reviewed on an ongoing basis, at least do it during an annual review.

6. Directory and user maintenance

Directory services and user ids are often left active even after the user or resource is gone. These should be reviewed every year to delete obsolete records and make sure the details and privileges of other records are up to date.

7. New technology strategy

With a good IT team, your current technology should be working for you, but there’s always change. Every year should include a strategic assessment of new technologies to determine whether they should be introduced into your environment or if you need to take measures to block risks they create. In addition, you should identify existing hardware and software that will soon reach its end of life so you can plan the upgrade or replacement paths.

Comprehensive IT management services from Prescient Solutions help businesses in Chicago and Schaumburg address their IT challenges on an ongoing basis. Contact Prescient Solutions to conduct an IT assessment and develop your IT strategy for business success.