Providing Secure Access Without Impeding Authorized Users

Network security is one of the most essential things for a business to consider in today’s world. Being online is a must if you want to stay competitive and relevant. This, however, comes with the inherent risk of data breaches. 

Organizations that deal with sensitive information — particularly healthcare and financial institutions — need to be especially aware of these risks. These types of enterprises represent greater targets due to the nature of their data and the result of a breach can be more severe and reputation shattering if information is lost. 

It’s important to understand these things aren’t just happening to other businesses. Your organization is at risk, even if you’ve been lucky thus far. To put things in perspective, about 80 percent of top IT people say they’ve had to meet with board members at least once over the past year due to the severity of an attempted breach.  

Furthermore, there are continually more and more devices connecting to enterprise networks that need to be secured. This is a lot easier to manage when all devices are internally selected and approved before being give to employees. But this is no longer the case in today’s world, where many people use their own PCs and smartphones to access organizational networks. Companies need to preemptively address this so an unsecured device doesn’t become a massive liability. 

Secure access helps organizations stay ahead of the game when it comes to cybersecurity. This is simply not negotiable in the modern landscape. But there’s another concept to contend with here. Growth is inherently important to most organizations. This can be stymied when there are too many safety hoops put in place. It’s necessary each organization figures out how it can provide secure access without making workflows overly cumbersome. 

Providing Secure Access Without Impeding Users

When it comes to providing secure access while minimizing roadblocks, enterprises employ the expertise of top IT professionals. Some companies may have individuals of this caliber working internally. But if they do, these employees are likely spending their time focusing on higher-level applications, despite secure access being of critical importance.

The smart play for many medium and large enterprises is to hire outside help to deal with secure access services. 

Here are a few things you should look for when evaluating various providers:

• Look for hybrid cloud support. Many businesses are discovering some growing pains when it comes to migrating to the cloud. Of course, there are new vulnerability concerns that need to be addressed. But enterprises with heavy legacy network infrastructure won’t make the leap in one jump. These organizations need hybrid cloud support to secure networks and assets, while accounting for on-premise applications. 

• Get a security provider that understands the important of ease of access. Oftentimes, people and companies that focus on security forget it’s an afterthought for most people. The main thing you’re trying to accomplish shouldn’t become secondary to security protocols. The right service provider knows this, and has built-in tools for ensuring secure access without headaches. 

• High-level support is a must. You wouldn’t want an inexperienced mechanic working under the hood of your car. Similarly, you don’t want people with minimal expertise responding to critical enterprise security alerts. Only consider providers that take their support seriously by having constant level-3 support.

• Make sure the security features are right for your organization. You don’t need to bring a bazooka to a thumb war. At the same time, there’s no second chance when your organization is unprepared for a threat. Ask about security features, and see what’s necessary versus optional. One perk to cloud-based providers is it’s typically easy to scale services up and down based on need.

Security needs to be a top priority when running any kind of business. However, providing secure access with impeding authorized users is key to successfully accomplishing this.