4 IT Infrastructure Skills You Should Master

Running a successful online business is not an easy job and it requires you to pay attention to several important aspects of your company’s IT. We are talking about elements such as hardware, software, networks, data centers and a wide range of equipment, which together entails the term IT infrastructure. This being said, here are four IT infrastructure skills you should master in order to run your online business more efficiently.

Cloud security

In 2017 more and more of your business operates entirely in the digital environment, which is a great help but also a curse. Data breaches, account hijacking, insider threat and malware injection are just some of the problems you may encounter due to a lax company policy, mismanagement of your team members or even deliberate malicious activity directed towards your brand. These and other issues, are just some of the things you need to learn how to deal with if you are to make your online presence much safer.

Remote collaboration

Another popular business trend in 2017 is one of hiring remote workers. In the era in which the field of IM software is on a steady rise and in which there is a plethora of amazing collaboration tools available, more and more businesses operate with telecommuters, instead of traditional on-spot employees. However, even though some of these technical issues have made such a thing possible (and even viable) it takes a lot of skill to coordinate remote collaboration with the highest efficiency. Here, the key to success lies in effective communication that is pivotal to creating effective working relations. This can be acquired either through experience or through one of the courses provided by organizations such as TP3.

Next-generation firewalls (NGFWs)

Earlier on we mentioned just how important your company’s cyber security is. Well, in order to take your company’s safety one step further, you may want to consider learning a thing or two about NGFWs. These incredible platforms represent a cutting edge, third generation firewall technology with the focus on aspects such as deep packet inspection and intrusion prevention, which were mostly neglected until now. Still, there are numerous other aspects that come into play here, such as impact assessment, network file trajectory (which needs to be as continuous as possible), malware remediation and both user and network endpoint awareness.

Mobile device management

Finally, you need to keep in mind that in the 21st century, mobile devices are a predominant internet browsing tool which makes mobile device management even more important. According to the recent statistic, Android is currently a more popular web browsing OS than Windows, which is something that would seem completely impossible just a few years back.

The greatest advantage that mobile devices bring to the workplace is the fact that there are many work-relevant platforms available on mobile devices, as well. The above-mentioned collaboration tools, mailing clients and IM platforms are all available on mobile, which makes it easier for everyone to stay available 24/7. Unfortunately, it is much harder for one to stay productive on a mobile platform, same as it is more difficult to adhere to numerous company policies. To cut the long story short MDM is there to ensure that those who work through mobile devices do so with the same efficiency as if they were on a PC.

Conclusion

While there are some honorable mentions of other skills that deserve to be improved and revisited (data center switching, malware sandboxing and cloud-managed networking), these four alone can make a huge difference when it comes to your company’s tech-efficiency. This being said, there are several ways to deal with them and while outsourcing may sometimes seem as a more cost-efficient option, in the long-term it is much better to acquire these skills yourself and deal with them on your own.