Growing viruses and continuous cyber hacks have government agencies and corporations concerned about the safety of their IT assets. Most organizations fail to realize that simple steps taken toward protecting IT assets are essential and will save them tons of costs, and seize the possibility of an attempted hack.
The Bad News
Intrusions in the IT sector for organizations are impossible to ignore. An “FBI” virus was recently reported from an Arizona news station showing that all levels of business and government are affected by cyber-attacks due to poor IT asset management. Much like the responsibility of keeping people safe that superheroes like Spiderman and Batman take on, the IT department must keep IT assets safe. The more complex an organization, the greater the burden and with that burden, a greater responsibility arises for IT to keep their assets safe.
The Good News
The burdens of these “heroic” responsibilities in IT asset management (ITAM) are attainable and there is a solution out there. The challenges for ITAM are solved through three crucial questions in risk management:
- What would be considered critical in my IT infrastructure?
- What areas are most vulnerable in my IT system?
- Where and when will my organization’s IT assets be affected based on evaluations?
Often enough ITAM can be caused by structural issues stemming from the employees of the organization. For instance, educating employees in ITAM will increase the chances of finding possible vulnerabilities. Organizations should teach employees to stay or get ahead of the game. For instance, If vendors decide to announce a vulnerability in their software, IT specialists should stay ahead of the game by responding to the vulnerability in a timely manner. These fall under the burden of the responsibilities for every IT department.
Another important factor which connects with education ideology is monitoring all software and more importantly the alerts from the software. Organizations tend to ignore the alerts, and often enough because they are not educated in the interpreting the signals. Regardless, these continuous hackings and intrusions are causing the IT community continue spreading awareness and increasing the responsibility to keep IT assets safe.
