Three Mistakes IT Makes

Posted by admin on 05 12 2016. 0 Comments

IT Mistakes

(Article from InfoWorld.com; Sponsered: GlobalSCAPE 2016)

IT departments are busy. From maintenance to troubleshooting, managing ongoing projects and overseeing resolutions on outages or system failures, there’s often little time for future project planning. However, when details get lost in the shuffle, that’s when costly mistakes happen. These mistakes can carry a heavy price tag, affecting your personal reputation and that of your organization.

Is your growing data a growing problem?

Your data is the lifeblood of your organization. In the information economy, a growing business means an increasing amount of data is transferred between your employees, customers, business partners and vendors. Issues start to arise when your file transfer infrastructure fails to scale with the growing needs of your business. Maybe you have been relying on a legacy system like an FTP server to transfer data, antiquated homegrown scripts, an ineffective file sync and share solution or a combination of the three to move your data. However you could be making the following mistakes with your file transfer infrastructure that could cost your organization millions.

MISTAKE #1: LEAVING LEGACY SYSTEMS IN PLACE

Issues stemming from legacy applications are one of the most difficult issues IT pros face today. Digital business initiatives have increased the need to exchange critical data across widespread, disparate systems. Yet fifty-seven percent of organizations are using gateway technology that’s more than 5 years old (Ovum Research). Legacy systems have a number of issues associated with them, including:

• The application uses outdated or obsolete technology or best practices

• Incomplete or sometimes no documentation, and the accuracy and currency of the documentation that does exist is suspect, leaving the IT team in the dark

• Skill sets needed to work with the older technology are no longer available

• The original developers are no longer working on the IT team or with the company

• Many different developers over the years have used different approaches, making the system less than reliable A rip-and-replace approach can be expensive and interrupt everyday business.

MISTAKE #2: USING THE WRONG TOOLS FOR THE JOB

The tools you use quickly become the backbone of any successful modern business strategy. Paired with the right team, great business tools will help your company reach its full potential. However, relying on the wrong tools will make it impossible for you to enhance internal productivity and increase ROI. If your tools do not deliver what you need, this is the price you will really pay.

IT departments are busy, and your team is pulled in many directions. There’s no question your team is working hard. But are they working smart?

The cost of not having the correct tools in place can set your team back significantly. Consider the time saving benefits of automation for manual business processes. Your team could be wasting hundreds of hours on manual business processes and making costly mistakes that wouldn’t otherwise happen if you could automate some of these processes. This is where the true cost comes into play. It would be a shame if you have the great team and the great strategy, but your department misses goals or doesn’t see the possible returns, because you don’t have the correct tools in place. It’s no wonder that fifty-four percent of organizations have project over-runs in time, dollars, and unforeseen fixes. Its situations like these that jeopardize your reputation and that of your department

MISTAKE #3: LETTING COMPLIANCE SLIP BY THE WAYSIDE

Those working in highly regulated industries like healthcare and financial services know all too well the hoops organizations must jump through to maintain compliance. Ensuring your organization is compliant can be an expensive and time consuming process.

Do you know what’s more expensive? Not complying with industry regulations.

A study by the Ponemon Institute showed that non-compliance costs organizations more than 2.66 times that of the costs of maintaining compliance. (Ponemon Institute, 2011) What accounts for this difference?

The cost of a breach. The study showed that the average cost of non-compliance was $9.9 million dollars and this didn’t account for indirect costs such as the incarceration of executives, loss of shareholder confidence, and damage to the organization’s reputation.

Negligence or maleficence isn’t always to blame. As it turns out, ignorance may play a factor.

A recent survey showed that 95% of individuals polled didn’t feel that they fully understand the obligations placed on them by various compliance regulations. (ShredIT) This isn’t necessarily a surprise. The documentation outlining compliance is notoriously long and complicated.

Add that to the fact that regulatory statutes are updated frequently as governing bodies try to get a hold of current privacy and legal issues, and the regulatory landscape may seem like shifting sand in the desert.

CONCLUSION

The mistakes discussed above seem simple on the surface, but difficult to entirely eliminate within organizations for one reason or another. In all likelihood, you may see shades of your organization or department in this whitepaper. The most important thing you can do is act. Put together an action plan today to solve some of these issues in your organization. A key part of this should be to find an MFT vendor to partner with to find a solution.