The cyber environment is growing increasingly complex. With new cyber risks, more remote workers, and IT evolving, it can be a lot for anyone to manage.
We find it’s useful to think about IT issues in terms of a four-part framework:
- Tech stack
- Security & compliance
- IT Management
- IT Operations
Looking at technology this way, your organization can better identify IT gaps. Learn what’s involved with each part of this framework to improve your IT strategy.
Tech Stack
The tech stack is also known as IT infrastructure. It consists of everything your business uses to function. That’s client-facing technology and back-end stuff (operating systems, servers, data storage, and more). You may also have some API services that help you connect different tech stack segments.
Your people need to be confident in the tech stack to get their jobs done. Those in charge of the tech stack focus on reliability, flexibility, and scalability. Budget considerations rank high, too.
Security & Compliance
Every business and non-profit is at risk of cyberattack. Depending on your industry, you may also face regulatory processes. You might need to comply with security control regulations in healthcare, payment processing, or protect personally identifiable information (PII).
No matter the size of your organization, you need to:
- Identify – understand cybersecurity risk to systems, people, assets, data, and capabilities
- Protect – safeguard your infrastructure and limit or contain the impact of a potential cybersecurity event
- Detect – identify the occurrence of a cybersecurity event in a timely fashion
- Respond – take action to contain the impact of a potential cybersecurity incident
- Recover – plan for resilience and to restore any capabilities or services impaired due to a cybersecurity incident
IT Management
IT management uses a vast array of tools to monitor and manage all business IT assets. Your IT management team knows what hardware and software is deployed and how it’s used.
The IT management area handles end-to-end delivery of IT services. They manage all infrastructure and system changes working to ensure minimal disruption. This is also the area that covers the help desk. Access requests or password resets? That’s IT management.
IT Operations
IT operations makes sure business technology is up and running so that users can be at their most productive. They establish the processes and procedures to monitor performance and manage availability. They are responsible for improving:
- Customer experience
- User access
- Service availability
- Internal and external network communications
- Device management
- Disaster recovery
Successful IT-enabled operations enhance operational efficiency and reduce operational risk.
Identifying The Gaps in Your IT
This four-part framework supports a more intentional view of IT. Aware that you need to pay equal attention to each of these four areas, you will be able to see where you’re slipping. Falling behind on business technology can:
- hurt your competitive advantage
- slow business processes
- hinder innovation
- frustrate customers
- undercut employee engagement efforts
- risk your compliance
- lead to a damaging data breach or other downtime
Your organization may be in a position to hire its own IT team, yet that puts the onus on you to find people to cover each of the framework areas. And it’s a tight labor market, especially in IT. You’ll need to recruit and train, and keep and develop the team, too. Or you could outsource your business tech to a managed service provider.
Working with an MSP, you gain access to IT experts with skills in all four framework areas. We keep current on tech stack innovation, security and compliance, and IT management and operations. It’s not as daunting for us, because IT is our business.
Contact us to learn more about our IT strategy and support offerings for organizations like yours.
