As businesses embrace new technology, there’s a need to improve or overhaul existing IT infrastructures.
Maintaining legacy infrastructures can prove challenging in the wake of disruptive innovations. These systems may be incapable of managing multiple vendors or working efficiently on different distribution channels.
Besides, older IT infrastructures may not integrate with new productivity tools, causing serious incompatibility and interoperability issues. Not to mention their vulnerability to cyber-attacks.
The only solution is to implement effective infrastructure management practices.
Adopting proper IT infrastructure management minimizes downtimes, reduces data breaches, and enhances overall operational efficiency.
In this post, we highlight the five strategies to overcome the common challenges in IT infrastructure management.
1. Automating Routine Infrastructure Tasks
Managing IT infrastructure is complex and technical.
Cybersecurity teams must constantly monitor your company’s hardware and software architecture to identify and prevent data breaches. When attacks occur, the teams must move swiftly to restore the compromised systems to full functionality, minimizing potential financial losses and damage to your company’s reputation.
As handling such repetitive tasks can be overwhelming for human cybersecurity personnel, your best bet is to embrace automation.
Automated infrastructure management (AIM) systems provide improved security through real-time monitoring and reporting across your data storage environments. AIMs also enhance data access and streamline IT-related operations. By tapping into these infrastructure management services, you can redeploy your IT staff to other critical departments in your company.
CloudOps and DevOps are noteworthy AIMs you can implement to revolutionize your infrastructure management. DevOps simplifies business processes using specialized codes and tools, while CloudOps improves the accessibility and security of software operating on cloud infrastructure.
2. Strengthening Security and Compliance
Cyber-attacks are the bane of modern businesses. Research suggests that cybersecurity threats have increased by a stunning 72% since 2021, underscoring the imperative of adopting robust security protocols.
Besides causing massive economic losses, cyber breaches may also result in a publicity nightmare. It’s only worse if audits uncover regulatory noncompliance, as your business may be heavily penalized.
Implementing meticulous IT security protocols, such as multi-factor authentication (MFA), can help address cybersecurity threats and encourage compliance. Using MFA, alongside other innovative security protocols like role-based access control (RBAC), improves data security by ensuring that only credentialed users can access your company’s critical information.
You can also integrate AI-driven software that continuously monitors and proactively identifies vulnerabilities in your IT workflows. Such tools can alert your cybersecurity teams of potential breaches, enabling you to respond decisively to threats.
Depending on your industry, adopting these interventions may help achieve regulatory compliance.
3. Enhancing Scalability and Flexibility
Scaling IT infrastructures can present monumental challenges for any business.
As your company expands to new locations and markets, there’s a corresponding need for IT systems that can manage larger data volumes and velocity. Replacing older infrastructures helps seal any loopholes for potential data leakages.
With hybrid cloud security architecture, you can seamlessly diversify your data storage to public, private, and on-premise resources. This ensures your sensitive information remains accessible when one storage point malfunctions due to ransomware or malware.
You can also minimize operational downtimes using GitOps. GitOps helps you manage your entire IT infrastructure from a unified platform. It’s a powerful collaborative tool that can enhance workforce synergy, improve problem-solving, and safeguard data integrity.
Moreover, you could integrate infrastructure as code (IaC) to automate your infrastructure management and reduce human manual errors using code. IaC is critical in reproducing consistent infrastructure configurations as you scale up. The technology is particularly useful for IT systems with multiple interconnected components, such as operating systems and data storage centers.
4. Improving Incident Management with Proactive Monitoring
Proactive IT monitoring falls within the broader goal of minimizing operational downtimes. It entails actively tracking your infrastructure for vulnerabilities and implementing timely interventions to avert potential disruptions.
One way to ace proactive IT infrastructure monitoring is by using predictive analytics.
Predictive analytics tools leverage historical data and statistical modeling to make accurate predictions. While commonly deployed to forecast sales and revenues, this software may also help keep up with proactive equipment maintenance, thwart cyber breaches, and stay ahead of emerging trends.
You might also implement a solid incident response plan to contain attacks after the fact. These plans mitigate the damage caused by breaches and stabilize your existing infrastructure as you work to restore operations to full functionality.
5. Reducing Downtimes with Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plans
Attacks can occur in the best-managed infrastructures. However, when they do, having a robust disaster recovery and business continuity plan can minimize the economic and logistical impacts of downtimes.
Regular backups are a cornerstone of a solid disaster recovery plan. By undertaking routine systems maintenance, you can uncover potential vulnerabilities and fix them ahead of time.
You may also implement failover systems. These IT architectures are your fallback plan in the event your primary databases, servers, or networks malfunction or are shut down for routine maintenance. They allow your employees and customers to enjoy consistent uptime even when your primary infrastructures are out of service.
Moreover, you could set up geo-redundant data centers. Designed to provide similar data storage capabilities, geo-redundant centers can come in handy during unforeseen outages in some of your data facilities.
Final Word
Implementing the above strategies is the surest way to overcome infrastructure management and position your business on a growth trajectory.
With IT constantly evolving and new threats daily emerging, it’s imperative to restructure your infrastructure to keep it in line with the latest technological advancements.
Website of Source: https://hexaware.com
Source: Story.KISSPR.com
Release ID: 1204630