Since 60% of businesses shut their doors within 6 months of a cyberattack, it's important that you ensure consistent stability and security. A network audit can save your business from detrimental consequences.

Network auditing is one of the most important parts of securing your business and remaining compliant with regulations. Read on to learn some situations when you need to invest in a network audit.

The Basics of Network Audits

Network auditing refers to the measures a business takes to gather, study, and assess data about its network. The purpose is to identify how well-secured and well-maintained it is. Ultimately, its goal is to ensure that you're compliant with regulations and not vulnerable to data breaches.

A quality network audit provides you with an S2Score. This numeric value ranges between 300 and 850. A score closer to 300 means that your network needs a lot of improvement while 850 is a perfect score.

When you receive your S2Score, you will have a quantifiable measurement of how well you are doing. Audits also provide you with information on what you are doing well and how you can improve. You can take concrete action to improve your score by following the advice provided by the professional audit.

Learning about your network health and specific vulnerabilities is a good way to begin securing your data. That's why it's important to know when you need to get a professional computer security audit.

You Haven't Had an Audit in a While

It's critical that you assess your business computer security annually. Technologies routinely change and it's important that you have the latest updates and upgrades. You may not even know what these are in some situations, but professionals can help.

Malware technologies that take advantage of vulnerabilities are also always changing. What constituted a good security system a year ago may no longer be effective. An audit helps you understand what parts of your current network security system need to be changed.

Your Inventory Has Changed

As businesses grow and change, they're bound to install new applications and software to their systems. You can't be familiar with the effects that these technologies have on your broader network without an audit. This is also true when you update and upgrade existing applications.

New software puts new demands on your network, as does more data. Mergers and acquisitions also lead to more stress on the system. You need to perform an audit so that you can assess their security and vulnerability.

You also can see which applications you're rarely using or where you could merge multiple applications together. This is a good way to cut back on costs and save your business money by dropping unnecessary software.

You Want to Improve Your Infrastructure

It's easy for businesses to fall into a complacent operational state. You begin to focus on day-to-day activities rather than looking at the technical aspects of your business. This is understandable but ultimately can lead to enterprises overlooking big-picture network issues to find necessary changes.

It's important to upgrade network technology every now and again to improve your infrastructure. There's a high chance that you can take advantage of new technologies and systems that your network audit will highlight. Network audits let you know the changes that would make the biggest impact on your enterprise.

For example, you may be using outdated backup software that works inefficiently and slowly. You likely don't even know that this is an issue, but an audit would identify that you aren't using the optimal software. It will tell you what you need to change and how you need to change it if you want to maximize your efficiency.

Troubleshooting Is Required

An average business will lose about $4.35 million during a single data breach. If you notice a blip in your network trends that could be a sign of malware, it's important to conduct a network audit the second that the issue is resolved.

Clearly, something is faulty within your security system if cyber criminals were able to penetrate it. Once the threat is gone, your #1 priority needs to be finding that vulnerability that you know exists.

An audit is the quickest and most efficient way to scan your system for holes that hackers were able to penetrate.

Even if the change in your network trend was not a malware-related issue, it still was a problem that could cause a network outage. You need to figure out why this shift happened to prevent future lag, slow load times, downtime, and application-related issues.

An audit can act as a way of troubleshooting the network so that you can get it back to its normal operational state.

Compliance Standards Are Changing

Almost every industry has constantly-changing compliance standards. This is true regardless of whether you work in a sales firm, a healthcare facility, or a financial office. If your business is behind on regulatory standards, you could find yourself with hefty fines and similar sanctions.

A network audit checks whether or not you tick all of the compliance standard boxes to ensure that you don't find yourself with bills you didn't need to pay.

Get a Professional Network Audit Today

While a cyberattack could put your company out of business, performing a network audit can drastically reduce the chances of this happening. Now that you know when it's time to get an audit, it's time to get an S2Score to assess, track, and mitigate risk.

Our experts are committed to helping you identify vulnerabilities and patch up holes in your network. Sign up for an audit with Desoto to assess your risk and improve your cybersecurity today.

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