Don’t Miss What Hackers See: The Importance of Network Audits
In 2019 there were a series of air freshener commercials highlighting how we can become “nose blind” to the odors in our homes and personal spaces. While these ads were mostly lighthearted and comical, they demonstrated a very real problem in our personal lives; when we encounter the same smells all day, everyday we no longer notice them, and can even miss them when they’re not there.
When it comes to information technology management, we often see a very similar phenomenon. We spend countless hours reviewing our systems, strategies, and policies to ensure they are configured, optimized, and enforced. But when we exercise the attention to detail that is so often sought in our engineers, administrators, and technicians it can be quite easy to become nose blind to larger issues or lapses in our infrastructure and security posture. We find ourselves looking at the same reports, or “panes of glass” as we’ve taken to calling them, to make sure that all the green check marks line up the same way they did yesterday; and so long as they do, we move on with our day.
Unfortunately, this is not how cyber criminals see the IT world. Hackers and other malicious bad actors prey on exactly this kind of complacency to find weaknesses in the system, or a loophole in the policy. This is where having independent audits and assessments become key in managing any IT infrastructure. When an engineer first encounters your infrastructure, whether they are a new employee or 3rd party vendor, they will often ask many questions and seek to understand the systems and policies that are in place in order for them to effectively manage their assigned tasks.
The Professional Services Team at Encore brings decades of IT experience along with extensive training to take a fresh look at your infrastructure and security posture. We’ll help identify not just those things you’ve been nose blind to, but a whole host of best practice experience and knowledge to help prevent issues before they arise.
Our infrastructure, systems, network, and security assessment packages include not just the industry standard programmatic approach of deploying a scanning tool and looking at the results, but in-depth analysis and review by a top-tier Systems Engineer to fully understand the big picture. Our engineers will meet with key stakeholders to understand their roles in managing and securing your enterprise. We approach each system as though it were our own to carefully understand not just what its purpose is, but why it is deployed, managed, maintained, and supported the way that it is. Our engineers will provide detailed recommendations and solutions for each assessment area.
Following any assessment, our engineers will present their findings in a detailed report and debriefing session with your information technology team to review their recommendations and answer questions the team may have. Encore Technology Group is fully prepared to assist in implementation of these recommendations in a number of ways, from providing guidance to your IT team, to having an engineer available during your implementations for support, or to delivering turnkey services to implement changes, updates, and upgrades for you.