7 IT Resolutions to Stick to This Year

By the end of the year, only 9% of us are expected to have actually achieved our New Year’s Resolutions and goals, and it is thought that majority of these resolutions will be broken by the time February comes round. With everyone in the office eating more salad than normal, signing up to a new gym or committing to the task known as ‘dry January’, this time of year is used as an opportunity by many to set some new goals and resolutions.

We all start off the new year committed to achieving these new goals and so many of us will have the ‘new year, new me’ mentality at the forefront of our minds. But often, we forget to set ourselves some time to reflect on our business. Reviewing how your businesses infrastructure performed in the previous year and deciding the direction you want to move forwards in provides the perfect opportunity to set some new business goals, but more specifically some IT goals. Barely a minute goes by in our day where we don’t rely on technology to fuel our livelihoods, which is why it is essential to ensure that our IT is up to scratch. Setting some intentional IT resolutions is the perfect way to do this.

Here at Corbel, we understand that it can be hard to know where to start when setting some new goals and intentions. Which is why, in this blog we have outlined the IT resolutions that we believe are crucial for your Suffolk business to implement in order to make this year the best and most efficient yet! From your budget spend, to Cyber Security culture, there is a wide array of things that your business can take into consideration in order to make this year even better than the last. Ipswich based Corbel Solutions would recommend that your business sticks to these 7 resolutions:

1. Test your backup and business continuity plan

Ensuring that your backup and business continuity plan has been fully tested is essential to your business continuity and ensuring that you are constantly making improvements. Reviewing your business continuity plan, will help to expose any gaps before an incident occurs and allow you to address where improvement can be made.

A further review of this plan can also help your organisation to keep up with rising demand for impeccable customer service and ensure that you are continually progressing.

2. Have an independent audit of your Cyber Security risk

It’s natural for you to assume that your business data will be safe and that you won’t be the victim of a cyber-attack, although unfortunately this is not the case. Hackers are getting smarter and more direct with their attacks and various sized businesses can be at risk. And with more and more organisations adopting a hybrid working structure, companies’ networks are being opened up to external environments when employees work from home, and these hackers are often looming and ready to attack any form of vulnerability.  

However, alongside other IT resolutions, conducting an audit and considering your encryption use, your network access control and transmissions, alongside other highly sensitive activities, it is a great way to ensure that mechanisms put in place to protect against data breaches are doing their task. Ensuring that your processes are efficient are going to help you stay ahead of cyber criminals whilst avoiding fines.

3. Ensure you have a patch management solution in place

A patch management solution is vital to your overall Cyber Security, as it protects your organisation from the latest security vulnerabilities. You will want to be patching regularly to ensure your protection is up to date and that any known vulnerabilities are taken care of. This will prevent any larger issues from occurring later down the line.

4. Maintain a strong Cyber Culture in your business

You might of heard of the phrase ‘Cyber Culture’ before but actually have no clue what it means, but it is vital that your organisation implements this as a part of your New Year IT resolutions. Essentially, if you have a strong Cyber Culture then you will all share a set of attitudes, practices, and goals that are all in alignment with safe and secure use of computers and the internet.

Having a strong Cyber Culture goes beyond just protecting your organisation from attacks and breaches, it’s about giving your customers confidence and building trust. If you have a strong Cyber Culture, with everyone in the organisation in alignment with safety practices, then customers will pick up on this and be encouraged to invest their security into you.

Additionally, having this strong Cyber Culture will significantly boost employees abilities to detect cyber threats which can prevent them from getting caught up in human error.

5. Prioritise Cyber Security training for your team

As I’m sure you may be aware, Ransomware is extremely dangerous and can take days, weeks and even months to recover from, so it is essential that employee’s knowledge on Cyber Security is up to date. This will inevitably prevent any downtime from occurring which can help your business to remain productive and reduce the likelihood of an attack.

Alongside this, it will minimise the risk when your employees are working from home as they are fully educated on how they can stay secure in different environments.

6. Review all your repeat processes to find opportunity for Automation

Through reviewing the repeat processes you undertake on a regular basis, there is an opportunity for you to see where you can automate things to save you time. Automation can help you to save time massively, as repetitive tasks that normally take you a while to complete are streamlined to perform work in the fraction of the time.

Ultimately, due to processes being shorter and requiring less resources with automation, productivity is increased and there is a chance for time to be spent more effectively elsewhere within the business.

7. Plan your IT budget to maximise spend against your business goals

Budgeting is essential to your business planning and it is one of the most important tools for guiding your business.

When your business makes an IT budget, you are able to see the amount of money you are dealing with, this will allow you to see where you can make the most of technology updates and resources, without effecting productivity too much. It makes sure that the organisation has the IT resources it needs to detect and leverage key business opportunities or changes in the industry, so is essential to growth.  

Does your business need some support achieving your IT Resolutions this year?

If you’re a small or medium-sized business based in Ipswich, Felixstowe, Stowmarket, Woodbridge or the surrounding Suffolk area and need some support with achieving your IT resolutions, then feel free to give us a call on 01473 241515 or email us at info@corbel.co.uk. From IT support, Cyber Security, and IT Consultancy services, there are a range of ways Ipswich based Corbel solutions can help you.

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Ipswich based Corbel solutions are a business IT Support partner who work throughout Ipswich, Felixstowe, Woodbridge, and the surrounding Suffolk area. Providing various services from IT support and solutions, Cyber Security and IT Consultancy services. If you would like to discuss, or are after any further information, then feel free to give us a call on 01473 241515 or email us at info@corbel.co.uk.