To succeed in the dynamic transportation industry, businesses must do everything in their power to smoothly run their operations. One way of achieving this goal is by staying on top of your I.T. game.
Transportation businesses must identify and incorporate the right I.T. strategies to remain productive. Incorporating and maintaining the right information technology solutions to solve problems might be difficult.
You can employ a number of measures to mitigate loss of resources in your business. The following are the top seven I.T. strategies your transportation business should adopt this year and moving forward:
#1: Invest in Cybersecurity
Businesses spend roughly 15 percent of their I.T. budget on internal security solutions. Despite the huge investments, approximately nine out of ten businesses have admitted to suffering from some kind of internal security breach.
Most transportation companies face cyberattacks that emanate from outside their networks. To avoid falling prey, it’s prudent to consider implementing top-notch security solutions.
The good thing is that these solutions aren’t costly, and the benefits of effectively protecting your enterprise from data theft will far outweigh any expenditure.
Here are some of the reasons you need to invest in I.T. security management:
- Protect your business from multiple financial losses.
- The loss of data not only sets back your operations, it can open you up to lawsuits if customer data is stolen. In addition to this, the rate of ransomware attacks continues to rise
- Protect your business from regulatory non-compliance and lawsuits.
- Even if a cyberattack does not occur, if you haven’t adequately protected customer information, you may still be open to legal action.
- Protect your business from threats from within.
- This could be due either due to disgruntled employees, or simple human error that may leave your network vulnerable.
#2: Considering Implementing New Information Technology? Think Twice!
Technological advancements within the transportation industry have helped businesses to conduct their operations in a more efficient and safer manner. However, the influx of tech needs to be managed carefully to make sure that it is consistent with the abilities of a business.
Implementing new technology isn’t a matter of simply “plugging and playing.” Prior to making this important decision, you need to check out the following things:
Before you implement the latest flashy technology, consult with your managed service provider, who can help you evaluate your current technology needs (as well as longer term needs based on your business goals and outlook) and whether your I.T. system can efficiently handle the new technology.
Your I.T. provider can also help you design a plan for integrating the new technology with minimal downtime and interruptions.
#3: Always Monitor Your Internal Network
If you’re to remain safe while handling your business matters online, you must monitor every network. Regardless of how efficiently you’ve set up your internal network, you’re still susceptible to critical network events occurring. This strategy is especially important if you have applied ‘’bring your own gadget’’ practices within your establishment.
Operational and networking disruptions remain at the top of the list of threats to an internal network. Contrary to what most people think, internal malfunctions are much more frequent and probable than cybercrime attacks. Actually, network or server trouble tends to be the most probable and constant threat that your I.T. department or service provider needs to monitor.
Just imagine your network has a faulty script that’s causing processes to deviate. This will definitely impact the final service or product delivery. This is especially true if you can’t see or specifically locate the problem because you haven’t invested in software and services to monitor your I.T. systems.
It can take a substantial amount of effort and time to not only troubleshoot your network but also come up with an effective solution. Time wasted can lead to loss of revenue and productivity.
Since the monitoring of a network is a vital task, yet one that can consume important resources if improperly implemented, you should let an I.T. expert handle the entire process for you. That will be more thorough and cost efficient than trying to take care of this on your own.
#4: Employ Strategies to Protect Your Company’s Sensitive Data
In this day and age, cyber thefts and data leaks are major threats to both small and large businesses. Whether you’re just a startup, or a giant in the transportation business world, you need to do everything within your power to effectively protect sensitive information from prying eyes.
Countless options are available to help you protect your data. While some are free, others will cost you. However, the adage of “You get what you pay for” definitely applies here. Are you sure you are willing to risk your business on free security measures?
An effective way of protecting your company’s delicate information is by archiving backups daily and putting strong passwords on the archives. You should also take advantage of the power of VPNs to encrypt all digital communications. These are just a couple of the many solutions you should be employing to keep your business safe in the modern era.
A managed service provider with a strong track record in security can help design a solution tailored to your company’s needs, as well as implement the solution, monitor your network and servers for breaches, and help train your employees in cybersecurity best practices.
#5: Develop Healthy Backup Habits
Businesses in the transportation industry push numerous documents daily. Even after digitizing your workflow, chances are high that all the information is spread across numerous online accounts. Is all your data backed up? With redundancies? If your systems crashed today would you be able to restore everything from a backup and return to operations with minimal downtime?
In order to develop healthy backup habits, it’s prudent to begin by consolidating all data and have your backups be pushed to, and stored at, an offsite location. After all, it doesn’t do much good to back everything up if your backup server burns down with the rest of the building…
Once you have a backup process place, it becomes effortless to let your I.T. systems automate and perform frequent backups without the risk of losing any piece of important information. Make sure your managed service provider is not taking any shortcuts with your backups.
#6: Always Filter Internet Content
Today, so much unfiltered content out there can severely harm your transportation business. Consequently, you must put in place measures that restrict internet access to employees regardless of their number—and regardless of whether you trust them not to visit harmful websites on purpose.
If all it took to avoid viruses and malware was avoiding obviously sketchy sites, the cybersecurity industry would be in real trouble.
A full-blown restriction policy is unnecessary. Just a smart one will do. You don’t have to keep your employees offline entirely if you have a good policy in place, and procedures to manage it. By utilizing a strong website filtering and monitoring software, you’ll manage to hugely reduce the risk of attacks to your machines by malicious software.
#7: Revisit Your Company’s Core I.T. Infrastructure
In this case, just begin with the basics: your back-end I.T. infrastructure. It not only needs to be properly set up, but also efficiently laid out. Infrastructure basically comprises of LAN switches and routers. Servers are also part of your infrastructure. However, depending on the size of your business, you may not have your own servers.
For optimal bandwidth speed and performance, your routers and LAN switches must be correctly set up, connected, as well as spread out. Often, even minor changes can result in a great spike in peak performance.
The rule of thumb is to never look at the I.T. infrastructure of your business as though it was set in stone. Have your MSP monitor usage, then ask them to present a plan to you that will ensure that you are getting the best performance from your hardware.
Final Words
With the above information technology strategies, you can certainly build your transportation business empire on a solid and healthy I.T. foundation. What’s more, you can manage to reap the countless benefits that technology brings with it.
An I.T. provider with expertise in the transportation industry can help you plan and achieve integration of these strategies into your operations. JMARK has been helping transportation companies increase their success with the help of innovative I.T. solutions for thirty years. With offices in Springfield, Missouri as well as Fayetteville, Arkansas and Tulsa, Oklahoma, transportation has been fundamental to our success.
The driving force behind everything we do is to help our clients leverage technology to save money and achieve their goals. To learn more about how we can provide your business with leading technology solutions for the modern oil and gas industry, contact us today.
- JMARKIT@JMARK.com
- 844-44-JMARK
