How to put this delicately… Some technology providers provide a “technology assessment” for free. What they mean is they’ll do a quick scan of your systems.
These automated assessments definitely aren’t worthless, and you will get data out of it. But most of the hard work is sorting through that data and determining what poses a risk to your business’s daily operations right now and what can wait, how those risks should be mitigated, and then communicating all of those things in a way that non-technical people will understand.
You won’t get that from an automated scan, no matter how good it is. But you will get that from a Marco Technology Assessment, and a heck of a lot more.
An IT Assessment for Non-Technical People
A business’s technology landscape can seem inaccessible to those of us who aren’t tech-savvy. But for businesses wondering how their technology might serve them better, getting insight into their tech stack’s strengths and weaknesses is essential. That’s why we developed an IT infrastructure assessment, where the results speak both to IT professionals and non-technical stakeholders within an organization — so everyone’s on the same page.
Here are four things you’ll learn from a Marco Technology Assessment.
1. The Current State of Your Security Posture
Business owners don’t always have a clear vision of what’s going on within their current infrastructure. This can make it difficult to approach technology decisions and capital investments with a strategic eye. Our assessment gives business owners a data-driven outlook of their current state of affairs.
We analyze and assess the following 12 key technology areas:
- Server Infrastructure
- Workstations
- File Systems
- Security
- Network Infrastructure
- Backup & Disaster Recovery (BDR)
- Email Systems
- Applications
- Internet Infrastructure
- Wireless Infrastructure
- Power & Environment
- Firewall
According to a recent study, almost 1 in 4 respondents said they still had access to accounts from past jobs. No quick scan is going to uncover risks like that.
We’ll look at active directors, user lists, and password policies. We’ll make sure your essential hardware and software are still supported. We’ll check to see that your firewall is configured properly, and we’ll conduct interviews to see how your tools are being used. Basically, we’ll go through every area of your business’s technology with a fine-tooth comb to help you avoid nasty surprises.
2. Your Areas of Risk
After we get insight into your current systems and how they’re being used, we’ll identify the known risks within each technology area.
To keep things simple, each of the 12 technology areas listed above will be given one of three scores:
- high risk
- medium risk
- meets industry best practices
3. The Potential Impact of Those Risks
As we get to know your technology, we’ll also get to know how your business operates. That way, we can assess what types of incidents would be merely frustrating and what could cause a massive disruption.
Let’s imagine a business that has a decent $5,000 firewall. It probably won’t fail. But if it does, that means this business won’t have access to the internet until they can get a new one. For some businesses, that’s just an unpleasant situation. For others, however, it would be catastrophic, and we’d recommend investing in a failsafe.
4. Recommendations for Mitigation
At the end of our assessment, we’ll give a full presentation that outlines your organization’s areas of risk, the potential impact each risk could have, and our recommendations.
We’ll also leave you with a technology roadmap that outlines what should be upgraded in the next five years.
What Happens After an IT Infrastructure Assessment?
For starters, budgets can get changed. You also might find that leadership will start to have a clearer understanding of some of your team’s challenges and why you should be consulted more often — about a wider range of topics.
Businesses are, of course, free to do what they please with the information we’ve provided. You can choose to mitigate risks in-house, you can use another provider, or bring our experts in for some or all of the work.
These assessments aren’t just glorified sales tools, and they’re certainly not “gotcha” tests for internal IT teams. But they are an excellent way for small to midsize businesses to get world-class expertise at an affordable price, and they’re a great way for enterprise-scale organizations to benefit from an outside perspective.
Finally, these assessments are an excellent way to help our fellow IT pros get a seat at the table.
Sound good? Let’s talk!
