If your organization relies on its network to perform daily tasks, it is important to have reliable network connectivity and security.
But if your organization does not have reliable network connectivity and security, it will adversely affect the productivity and efficiency of your employees and result in cyberattacks and data breaches.
These consequences often result in lost customers costing your organization hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair your network following a cyberattack.
For this reason, it is important to understand and utilize best practices for safe and reliable network connectivity to avoid these challenges from happening.
Coeo understands how important a reliable and secure network is to an organization and has delivered thousands of network connectivity and security solutions to improve their network performance and security.
By the end of this article, you will understand the best practices for safe and reliable network connectivity and which practices are most appropriate for your organization.
The best practices for safe and reliable connectivity
It is important for your organization to understand best practices when it comes to network performance and security to optimize your network and get the most out of it.
These best practices will help improve your network, resulting in better employee productivity and efficiency enabling your organization to avoid cyberattacks and data breaches. These best practices include:
Network provisioning
Network provisioning can be done in-house or outsourced to an IT professional. Whether done in-house or outsourced, network provisioning is one of the most fundamental elements for a network.
The network provisioning process includes setting up network routers and firewalls, assigning IP addresses, and configuring LANs and VPNs.
The network administrator can use network configuration templates to design and provision the network.
These templates help administrators quickly configure new devices for deployment and help ensure that these configurations are uniform across all new devices.
Network monitoring
Network administrators must also monitor the network to ensure uptime and performance. These administrators can use network monitoring tools such as SD-WAN and SASE to monitor the performance to help automate alerts when performance issues arise.
This helps relieve some of the responsibilities for network administrators by giving them time to work on other network initiatives.
Troubleshooting
When a network failure or outage occurs, the network administrator is responsible for troubleshooting the network and finding the root cause as quickly as possible.
Administrators should document the root cause of the problem and what was done to eliminate the issue to decrease the probability of outages occurring.
Bug and vulnerability patching
It is important for administrators to perform regular vulnerability scans to find weaknesses within the network that lead to cyberattacks. It is also important to patch the network regularly to avoid any vulnerabilities.
Administrators should put processes in place to review and perform firmware patching like any other network change that goes through a thorough change control process.
Conduct regular backups
It is important to perform regular network backups, so no data is lost in the event of an outage. Backups make copies of all data stored in your network and are used in case data is lost or stolen.
This helps in the event of a data breach when sensitive data is stolen or when a major outage occurs caused by a disaster. Backups are important to restore data as part of disaster recovery.
Maintain compliance
Network administrators must also ensure the network is compliant with legal policies and requirements in addition to maintaining network performance.
Depending on the type of business, organizations operating in teams must operate within and enforce compliance standards such as HIPAA. To maintain compliance requirements, it is important to perform network audits and documentation.
Network automation tools can also help automated security to maintain compliance verifications.
If you would like to speak with our team to learn more about network management and performance or ask any questions you may have you can schedule an appointment.
Which of these best practices is the right choice for your organization?
Now you understand the best practices for safe and reliable network connectivity. However, it is also important to understand whether these best practices are the right choice to improve network performance and security for your organization.
If your organization relies on network connectivity to perform daily tasks, using these best practices will enable to effectively monitor your network and optimize performance.
Additionally, if your organization has experienced poor network performance, network vulnerabilities, or network penetration, using these best practices will improve network performance and security.
Using these best practices may also benefit your organization if you are looking to maintain legal network compliance.
However, if your organization does not manage your network internally and instead outsources to a network provider, these best practices may not be necessary as your provider will operate under these principles.
Determining if these best practices are the right solution for your organization
Now you understand the best practices for safe and reliable network connectivity, and whether they are right for your organization. This will help determine if these best practices should be incorporated into your network monitoring and management strategy.
No organization can survive with poor network performance and security. This will result in decreased employee productivity and efficiency as well as network vulnerabilities that lead to cyberattacks.
This can also result in lost customers and revenue and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair network damage following a cyberattack.
Understanding the best practices for safe and reliable network connectivity can help improve connectivity and security to avoid these consequences.
Coeo understands how important reliable network performance and security are and has delivered SD-WAN and SASE to thousands of organizations to help with their network security and performance.
We want you to understand the best practices for safe and reliable network performance so you can determine if these practices can help optimize your network.
If you would like to speak with our team to learn more about network management and performance or ask any questions you may have you can schedule an appointment.
Now that you understand the best practices for network management, read this article to understand how you can determine if your network is secure:
