The stark reality of IT budgeting is that there are plenty of IT risk management issues that can easily be overlooked, only to end up impacting your budget in a big way.
Here are five pointers to include in the agenda for your next IT staff meeting which will help avoiding an unwelcome bill later in the fiscal year.
1- Carefully assess third-party technology availability.
In today’s world, a lot of companies have integrated supply chains which incorporate third-party IT technology partners such as – Itass, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, with the list of “as a service” offerings continuing to grow.
Such third-party vendors are of critical importance in the supply chain. What would happen if a critical software application went down? Or if your infrastructure was unavailable for an hour, or six hours. Or an entire day. Chances are, the repercussions would be felt up and down the supply chain, from the executive at the very top to the final customer.
The solution here is to get the partner ensures availability despite an event taking place, and how a vendor can validate the effectiveness of those plans. Solid proof of such availability is a must.
2- Understand all of your inter-dependencies.
Applications, platforms, infrastructures, systems and networks are all interdependent in today’s business environment, combining to be a spider-web.
It’s vital for IT departments to understand every strand and juncture of this inter-connected spider web so that they have a valid and comprehensive perspective on how an issue in a given area would impact the supply chain – and plan accordingly.
3- Decide what to do after a breach.
Despite threat analysis and preventative measures, breaches do happen. A breach almost always costs a company. However, it will cost a lot more if IT hasn’t taken the time to decide what to do in the aftermath of a security breach.
This is where cyber incident management comes to the fore. Proactive planning around a breach and the reaction to it can help limit the unplanned costs for IT if an event were to happen.
4- Invest in disaster recovery during applications/systems development.
Application/systems development take place in a pristine sandbox. There are no unplanned outages, no business interruptions, and no hacks. Then, the application/system is deployed in the real world and things just might not seem rosy any longer. The first incident typically hampers the application/system and everything downstream of it.
IT, in being proactive and building disaster recovery (DR) into the software development life cycle (SDLC) process will explore vulnerabilities to mitigate them while still in the “sandbox” phase.
5- Keep yourself updated with change management requirements.
Weak IT change management always costs in the long run. Applications and systems may be running with outdated versions. Security updates and patch implementation may lag behind.
Due to this, risk increases. With increased risk, the probability of a hack, a software failure, a broken interface or even a clumsy recovery – gets higher. To avoid having to explain an unplanned capital expense, it is in the IT’s best interest to be rigorous about change management across ALL aspects of IT.
Altogether, the five issues mentioned above are often easily overlooked. To safeguard your budget, it would be prudent to look into dealing with them.
