What a Good Network Assessment Can Tell You
January 11th, 2018 by admin
In weightlifting, it’s not uncommon to employ the help of a professional trainer to watch your form. While you lift the weights in various ways, the trainer will take note of the various things you’re doing – both voluntarily and involuntarily. For example, your hands may rest firmly and properly on the bar, but your leg stance may be completely incorrect. While you lift, your head may be perfectly straight… but your back is twisting at an angle. When weightlifting is done properly, you’ll get better, healthier, and stronger. But when done poorly, you may experience injury and pain. That’s where the trainer comes in handy. The trainer’s job is to fix these mistakes through observation. They help you by tweaking what you do slightly to ensure proper form. As a result, you’ll experience less pain and eventually be able to lift more than you could ever do before.The Necessity of a Network Assessment
Your business needs to “lift” all the time – whether it’s improving client relationships, managing daily operations, or even maintaining internal communication. A comprehensive network assessment tells you exactly where you need to up your game and fix your IT’s form. It’s not exactly the same as weightlifting. Instead of looking for strained muscles and poor range of movement, network assessments scan for security gaps, bottlenecks, resource usage, and inventory.Security Gaps
75.6% of organizations encountered at least one successful cyberattack within the past 12 months. It’s important for your organization to stay vigilant for evolving threats. Network assessments can give you valuable knowledge of your security trouble-spots so that you can address them before things go wrong.Bottlenecks
Bottlenecks are particularly difficult to pinpoint without a network assessment. Usually, people will notice the results of the bottleneck rather than the bottleneck itself. Fixing them can be as simple as replacing outdated technology or increasing allocated network bandwidth.Resource Usage
It’s not always about the technology. Your company has multiple employees that utilize different applications and devices throughout the workday. In other words, these employees depend on different resources to get their jobs done effectively. Network assessments can detail exactly what these are, and help you better allocate them to improve your organization’s productivity.Inventory
As companies grow, there tend to be more devices connected to the central network. These devices can sap bandwidth and hog resources, slowing your other devices down. Network assessments scan your network and provide you with a complete list of everything on your network. As an added bonus, they can also tell you some important aspects of these devices. For example, if a connected device is running an outdated version of a security program, the network assessment will inform you. You can use this information to clean your network up and optimize it for maximum results.How to Assess Your Network
There are several tools you can use to run a network assessment. There are plenty of choices online, including one by Microsoft. However, it’s important to remember that you need to do more than simply run the network assessments. To truly see improvements, you need to act upon the data and make changes to your organization as necessary.Posted in: Blog