Why Do a Tech Assessment?

Recently, I spoke on a panel at #ILTACON2024 about Strategy and Operations in legal IT and as October is Cybersecurity awareness month and the end of the year is approaching, it’s a good time to take stock in your IT operations. 

Are you ready for what’s next?  Do you have the budget to achieve the strategic goals of the firm and the departmental goals you need to achieve in alignment?  All this brings me back to technical assessments.  Whether you do them yourself or get some help, taking stock of your technology, your team’s skills and your processes is never a bad thing.  Many firms do them every few years as a self-check.  They help you identify gaps that need to be addressed and points the way to solutions that may not be evident until you see everything summarized in one place.

Typically, assessments give you a rundown of your technology stack as a baseline but also where your team might need some upskilling. Assessments also find places to improve your processes and documentation to handle disasters and build a resilient, secure IT function. They answer questions like, what is your disaster recover plan? Have you tested it, fully? Do you test your backups? If you lose a key team member, are all your processes documented or locked in that individuals head? What if you experience a breach? Today, we know it’s a question of when, not if. Are your people and systems ready to minimize the impact and quickly recover? We don’t like to think about it happening to us, but being prepared is half the battle.

Technical Assessments can be very quick and done over a few days for smaller environments or be much more involved if you are trying to answer bigger questions related to security and cloud readiness.  Regardless of whether you perform the exercise yourself or contact someone like Cornerstone.IT to assist, knowing where you stand is never a bad thing.  As the phrase goes, “There is no security in obscurity”.  Knowing where you are today can only help you get to a better tomorrow.