Cybercrime, poor user productivity and improper network utilization pose security and throughput threats to businesses every year.
To reduce losses and protect valuable assets, proactively identify network issues—such as viruses, malware and botnets, or high bandwidth, CPU and memory usage—with a cyber threat assessment.
Network Assessments Uncover Threats
Provide your network with a much-needed checkup to evaluate security vulnerabilities, productivity and overall network performance. Run a threat assessment if you are:
- Concerned you are at risk for a breach.
- Experiencing issues with networks or systems.
- Looking for a way to enhance system visibility into user productivity.
- Looking to refresh or upgrade your system’s hardware or firewalls.
A cyber threat assessment analyzes the current state of your network and identifies risks that may otherwise go unnoticed in three key areas:
- Security and threat prevention: Uncover if malware, botnets or malicious activity is detected on your network. Know which applications are high-risk so that your organization can take remedial action.
- User productivity: Keep tabs on user and application use to uncover suspicious or negative activity that may be a result of phishing, illegal website visits or consuming too much bandwidth. See top application and web categories, and web domains accessed to evaluate resource utilization and corporate policies.
- Network performance: Evaluate network utilization and performance (e.g. average bandwidth or sessions by hour) to determine how effective the current infrastructure is at supporting usage, and to guide capacity planning.
Use Your Assessment to Remedy Your Network
Running an assessment allows you to catch threats and inefficiencies early, and fix proactively. For example, here are steps your business can take, if you experience:
- Botnet and malware infections: Immediately identify and clean infected systems with anti-virus software to prevent compromised systems.
- Improper web or application usage: Use visibility to uncover internal improper or illegal system activity. Contact responsible parties, and/or create new polices that explain application or web usage on company devices and systems.
- Network or bandwidth complications: If too much bandwidth is being utilized, consider upgrading to a more appropriate amount or setting corporate policies to limit consumption.
Avoid Future Threats With a Trusted Provider
Working with a trusted vendor can help reduce threats and improve network performance. Managed network service providers help with the design, deployment and management your network to meet your organization’s business and security needs.
How does your business assess its network’s vulnerabilities? Share with us in the comments below.
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