Networking Security – More Than Just Security for Your Business Data

Networking Security – More Than Just Security for Your Business Data

With the average cost of a business data breach in Australia reaching over $3 million and increasing each year, it’s no surprise that ensuring network security is a top priority in most businesses, especially those handling sensitive financial and personal data. However, as critical as this protection is, it’s not the only benefit that networking security brings to your business.

Seamless Communication

The Local Area Network (LAN) or Wide Area Network (WAN) forms the backbone of your organisation’s communication network, ensuring employees can access, share and store resources with ease. The performance and reliability of your network depends on the amount of planning done before installation as well as the professional experience and skill required to properly configure and implement the network.

This is a foundational structure of your organisation, so if it is poorly set up, no amount of quick fixes and upgrades will deliver the performance and security you need. You need to work with experienced professionals from the start or face a ground-up network upgrade.

This will ensure performance, reliability and security as well as useful features such as segmentation (so you can implement tighter controls where required), restricted access (so only authorised personnel can access certain data), and validation (so gateways and firewalls have the capability to protect your network against internal and external threats).

Increased Productivity

A wireless network has become essential in the modern workplace, giving employees the freedom to work from multiple locations and devices with ease. Employees can hot-desk, move to collaborative or quiet spaces as their tasks demand, and work off tablets, smartphones and computers as needed.

In addition, a professionally installed and maintained network ensures minimal network downtime and disruption, which can be incredibly costly to any organisation. In fact, according to Gartner, network disruption due to server and network access problems cost US$5,600 per hour on average. For a more insightful view, you can calculate your organisation’s downtime losses with this simple equation:

[Number of Employees] X [Hourly Wage + Average Benefit Cost] X [Total Downtime Hours]

When your network goes down, work grinds to a halt as your employees lose access to the web, software programmes, email and data files on the network – and your customers lose access to all websites and mobile apps hosted by your network.

To reduce downtime risks as much as possible while increasing productivity and efficiency, network specialists commit to essential tasks such as employing high-level authentication, securing client settings, implementing wireless intrusion prevention protection, and actively monitoring for rogue access points, and much more.

Cost-Effective VoIP

Mitigate the costs of landlines instantly by adopting VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and managing communications through computer-based voice calls rather than traditional telecommunications infrastructure. VoIP is also more secure for communications, supporting overall network security with features such as multi-factor authentication, traffic encryption, firewalls and intrusion prevention and detection, which are not available on landlines.

VoIP works in a number of different ways that suit different organisational or individual preferences, including VoIP handsets and software solutions. Even better, it’s cable free – so there’s no messy (and costly) installation.

Disaster Preparedness

Disaster preparedness is as essential for a small or medium-sized business as it is for a large enterprise. In fact, it can be even more challenging for a smaller business to recover fully in the event of data loss or compromise, whether it was caused by human error, a natural disaster or a malicious attack.

Just imagine what the costs would be if you had to go offline for a week because ransomware locked you out of your files? Or if a new employee deleted or overwrote critical files by mistake?

Comprehensive network installations offer disaster recovery options that provide essential peace of mind for any business, by not only helping prevent malicious attacks and stop them before they do too much damage, but by securing your regularly backed up data on an offsite, secure cloud storage system to minimise losses even in worst-case scenarios.

Professionally Designed, Installed and Maintained Networks for Every Business

At Otto IT, we work with small and medium-sized businesses in every industry across Australia, partnering with our clients to help make running a business easier, more efficient, and more secure.

When you partner with us, it’s not just about getting a solution that works for your business – it’s about building a long-term relationship where we work 24/7 to ensure you have what it takes to run your operation hassle-free. With tailored solutions designed around your goals as well as cutting-edge IT offerings, we put your satisfaction first.

Contact us today to find out more about our managed IT services and solutions.