Compliant or Secure?
No matter the size of your business, if you are a start-up or well established, your technology should be secure… or is it compliant? With the national news filled with cases of even big businesses enduring countless hacking attempts, breeches in their networks, and data loss, the topic of technology and system security/compliance is top of mind. The issue is however, should businesses strive to be compliant with their industry specific requirements or should they seek to meet network security standards?
Well, the simple answer is, both. Security and compliance are not the same, and frequently don’t cover the same areas of your technology systems. But what does this mean for your business and why does it matter anyway?
Compliance
Most businesses fall into an industry category that has specific requirements for network and systems standards. Everything including financial fields, medical offices, business services, schools and many other industries are required to meet network compliance standards by an overseeing agency. These standards are intended to ensure a minimum level of network stability but frequently do not focus on complete threat prevention and disaster preparedness for a technology system.
Security
Your network needs to be secure, it’s that simple. But what does security really mean. Unified threat management coupled with a complete backup program is ideal. This means that your network is covered by network, email, and web protection while providing a comprehensive data backup system to ensure limited downtime in the event of server or building failure. The goal of a network security program is to ensure your specific business network’s protection and the continuity of your business operations.
Why not just choose one?
When a business is given their compliance regulations, many frequently view the list as a complete overview of everything their network needs for security. Technology security authority at Versign, Danny McPherson, estimates “about 80 percent of what is ascribed to the [business] IT security budget is actually spent on compliance issues. Worse yet, most customers don’t invest in anything more than anti-virus and firewall technologies, which generally means that the organization is still at risk to a whole host of security issues.” Compliance is necessary, but at what cost, your network and data could be paying the price of lacking security.
If a business just chooses to go the security route some necessary compliance standards might be missed resulting in potentially bigger issues. So you have to do both, that sounds like a daunting and likely expensive task, well there are options.
The Total Package
Taking many of those compliance standards and security needs to the cloud is a practical and cost efficient means of achieving the total package while also adding ease of management. We have often discussed the benefits of the cloud, its cost saving options (Cloud Computing) and its ability to streamline services meaning you pay for what you need and nothing more. Currently, there are many scalable full service unified threat management options available that operate with this structure in mind.
- The cloud options provide full-scale unified threat management service, often working in conjunction with a hardware piece but now provide ala carte services that can be tailored to specific compliance requirements. With extensive research and testing behind many of the services even banks are using this format to ensure compliant AND secure networks.
- For backup solutions, also a frequent component in compliance standards, cloud and hardware hybrid systems exist (check this out). While expediently increasing the stability of the old tape backup or even digital external hard drive solutions, these systems also provide the peace of mind your business wants, at a price you can’t beat.
When a business is presented with compliance or security as a network standard the solution should be both. With many an option available today to accomplish any standard, the key is in making sure you have the knowledge of the products and options available and someone who knows the standards you are looking to meet.
Midwest Computech has been establishing and securing business networks for more than 25 years. We specialize in making your network meet your goals while maintaining a secure and efficient process for all of your employees. Contact us today to find out what products and service can benefit your business. 1-800-346-8934 or info@midwestcomputech.com.